


On the Two

by Lifeinahole



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ballroom Dancing, Dirty Dancing, Eventual Smut, F/M, Slow Burn, Summer Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-08-14 12:30:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 56,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16492652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lifeinahole/pseuds/Lifeinahole
Summary: He’s one bad trip from ending up in AA, and she’s one performance away from a solid job and moving closer to home. Their paths were unlikely to cross until Camp Hope brought them together. How and why they meet and intertwine is against the odds, and definitely against the rules, but will that really stand in their way? A Dirty Dancing inspired modern au.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome!! I can't believe it's finally ready to post, so I'm not going to blather on. Here it is! Chapter 1!!

**_Welcome to Camp Hope!_ **

**_About Us_ **

_Years ago, Ruth Nolan operated these camp grounds as a haven for children to explore the fruits of the Earth and come into their own. For fifteen years, she oversaw the summers of thousands of children, all in need of the room to grow and eager to learn the skills of the outdoors._

_In honor of Ruth’s hard work, we’ve re-opened the camp to those who still want to learn about the wilderness, explore the rich terrain that this coastal Maine property has to offer, and take the classes you’ve maybe not had time to take in the past. It’s not all outdoors, either! Our staff is composed of very talented individuals that are available to teach you almost anything, from dancing to the arts, yoga and fitness routines, as well as anything you’d expect from the average camp of summers past. You’ll enrich your body and mind and connect in ways you never have before!_

_A summer camp for adults may seem like an outdated or unconventional thing, but here at Camp Hope, we aim to improve the memories you may have of summer camps long past, or make new ones if this is your first time. Plus, now is your chance to try things like zip-lining without getting a consent form signed! There are plenty of perks to trying new things when you’re old enough to decide for yourself._

_Please check our FAQs and pricing packages; your stay can be as short as a week or as long as the whole summer. Our accommodations range from your own private cabin to our brand new, hotel-style lodgings. We welcome you, and hope you’ll enjoy your experiences!_

_Sincerely,_

_Snow and David Nolan_

_Owners, Camp Hope Ltd._

-x-

Sifting through the mail on his table, Killian tosses the pamphlet for some kind of camping place into the stack to be thrown away. It joins the myriad of advertisements and coupons that he doesn’t bother to look at or ever use. Besides, if it’s a camp marketed towards adults, it’s likely something religious or a thinly veiled addiction recovery facility, and while he’s probably edging along the lines of alcoholism, he’s damn well not there yet.

There’s roughly a week’s worth of mail here, as it’s been a couple days since he’s even thought to check his mailbox, but he’s sure Liam will be up his arse any day here to go over his finances. If he makes it _look_ like he’s been keeping things in order, Liam is less likely to give him his Worried Brother speech this month.

He sips at his coffee, pausing just a moment to pop two painkillers before resuming his sorting. When he’s hungover, the phantom pain where his left hand should be is stronger, and today is no exception to that. He hasn’t bothered to put on his prosthetic, content instead to leave it off until he has to go into public.

Days like this, though, he has nothing but time to mindlessly sift through his queue and get day-drunk. It’s been ages since Killian can remember going more than two or three days without a drink. That doesn’t stop him from unscrewing the top of his favorite brand of rum when he pours the second cup before he settles in to watch Netflix. He sprawls across the couch, happy as he ever can be to live off the settlement over the accident that cost him his hand.

There’s a bar down the street that he visits when he needs personal interaction, and if he’s lucky there might even be a woman willing to help with even more _personal_ interactions. That’s what last night had been – him in the bar until closing, a brunette that he can’t remember the name of giggling as she pulled him towards her car. A short while later, a cab brought him home, alone, with a little less dignity than he had before.

The sound of a key in the door announces Liam’s arrival before the man himself calls out a greeting, and Killian is minimally glad for the distraction from the road of self-pity and/or loathing that he was about to embark down. He knew there was a good reason to starting his sorting today. He stashes the bottle of rum beneath the coffee table again, running his fingers through his hair real quick to tame it down.

“Ah, you _are_ awake. Excellent. I thought we’d set your bills straight, and maybe head out for some lunch. Breakfast? What meal are you on?”

“Let’s just call it brunch. Eat first, bills second,” Killian declares, sending his spiked coffee one forlorn look as he realizes he’ll have to go get dressed and act like a responsible adult for a few hours. He takes one more gulp before taking the mug to the kitchen to dump it out.

He’s in his room for just over five minutes, using food as a motivator to get him out the door sooner. The shirt is mostly wrinkle free, and he thinks the jeans he slides on are clean, so he’s at least presentable and won’t have to deal with Liam’s tongue-clicking. He makes sure to snag his sunglasses off the entryway table before ushering his brother out the door. Had he taken much longer, Liam surely would’ve declared that the bills looked quick or manageable, and they’d take ‘just a minute more’ to complete. As it is, he can see his piles have been tampered with, straightened and organized to his brother’s preferences, as he glances back on his way out; he timed it just perfectly.

Halfway through eating, Liam takes a sip from his water before placing it back on the table, steepling his fingers as he rests his hands on the table. “I’ve just had a thought,” he says in a way that really gives away that he’s been sitting on this for a while now. “How would you like to get out of town for a while?”

“When? How long?” Killian asks, preoccupied by the task of trapping all the toppings on his sandwich. He hates using his prosthetic to eat, doing his best instead to wrangle the whole thing with his right hand while his left arm stays beneath the table.

“Over the summer? We could make an adventure of it. Maybe go back home, visit the relatives. It’s not like you’re doing anything here. As my own boss, I can afford to take some time off. We go, we live a little, return in the fall as new men. What do you say?”

The prospect of getting out of the city, away from everything that holds painful memories for him, _does_ sound appealing. Spending the whole time with his brother, however, tarnishes it just a touch. It’s not that he doesn’t love his brother, but Liam has a tendency to be… a little overbearing.

Of course, for a long time after Killian’s accident, Liam probably had every right to be. He’d just lost a hand, for fuck’s sake. Coming just after the loss of his fiancée probably didn’t help, either, but Killian was deep in a hole of depression for so long he wasn’t sure he was ever going to see the surface again. Now, he’s not so much depressed as he is resigned to this life, unemployed due to disability, living off the accident settlement, and drinking away his feelings as often as possible without officially becoming an alcoholic.

The thing is, Liam’s overprotective shadowing of Killian’s life is nothing new. He’s been this way for as long as Killian can remember, and since Killian can only half remember a handful of instances with either their mum or their dad, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibilities that Liam feels more like Killian’s father than his older brother. Still, every bird has to fly the nest sometime.

And Killian did for a bit. He flew, and was so close to having everything he wanted in his life – a job doing a craft he loved, a woman that he intended to marry and grow a family and home with, and still the taste for adventure on the tip of his tongue if he ever chose. But all good things come to an end, in his experience.

First was Milah’s passing. Her brief but destructive illness soaked up all their life savings, leaving Killian with a broken heart and empty pockets. He didn’t care about the money, and why should he? He lost the reason he was saving it in the first place. He could earn it all again, but he’d never have Milah back. And then, shortly after, as he helped wrap up a custom boat build for a wealthy client, something went wrong. He still doesn’t remember exactly what happened, just that one minute he had a left hand, and the next he didn’t; it really was that simple.

“I’ll think about it,” Killian finally says, abandoning the hand-held option for his food and dropping it back into the basket it came in. He stabs at the pieces of it with his fork and considers the offer. He _will_ think about it, too; he’s not just saying so to change the conversation back to footy and traffic patterns. It’s been a long time since he’s gotten away. He’s set for life on a permanent vacation if he so chooses, but a change of scenery would be welcome at this juncture of his life.

The idea marinates all while they finish their meal, and the whole walk back to Killian’s apartment. He’s so hung up on the possibilities involved that he doesn’t even complain as they sit down with his meager stack of bills. He signs when he’s told to do so, with no remarks about the tedium of the task while they work.

By the time the afternoon is wrapping up, Killian has made up his mind. As Liam stamps the last of the bills and puts Killian’s checkbook back where it resides, Killian speaks up. “I’ve thought about your offer to get away for the summer. Might not be such a bad idea, after all.” He keeps his tone light, nonchalant, hoping that Liam won’t catch on that it’s something he might _genuinely_ be excited about for the first time in longer than he can recall.

“Excellent. Leave all the planning to me,” Liam says as he stands and throws the trash into the bin. “I’ll send you a packing list when I’ve finalized the plans and we can meet up again to get everything squared away for a couple months out of town.”

With a shrug, Killian extracts himself from the couch in order to see his brother out since all their business is complete. In his distracted state, he misses the gleeful look on Liam’s face; it’s an expression his brother was infamous for as they were growing up and meant that Killian was about to be served a life-lesson, and he likely wasn’t going to enjoy it very much. But he’s so lost in his thoughts about all the places they may go – both familiar and new – that he bids his brother goodbye and settles back in for his slightly interrupted day of Netflix.

He doesn’t even slip more rum into his glass until after he’s had his dinner.

-x-

Emma Swan is just as much a part of Camp Hope as the camp is part of her. For the last fourteen years, Emma has been making the journey of varying lengths back to the campgrounds; it’s something a lot like flocking home for the summer, and she’s made the trip from right in Storybrooke – the tiny town closest to the camp – and from as far as Tallahassee, all those years ago.

This year, she’s traveling from just outside Boston along with her roommate, Ruby. While the stories of their upbringings are vastly different, Emma and Ruby have been two peas of a pod since Emma’s first trip.

Back then, she was journeying to Camp Hope as part of a foster kid outreach program. It was two glorious weeks that she and twenty-some other foster kids got to go to someplace new, rather than waste away in a group home or get shipped off to bible camp again. She was fourteen, and while some of the crafts and activities were aimed at kids much younger than her, she still sat at the table and made bracelets, tie-dyed a shirt and bandana, and participated in capture the flag with water balloons like it was her first time, but that’s mostly because it was.

At the campfire that night, Ruby plopped down next to her, showing her the “right” way to toast marshmallows and offering to put red streaks in Emma’s hair so they could match.

Emma passed on the streaks, but the next day when Ruby dragged her to a special meeting for future counselors, it was all history from there. More than just finding a way to spend her summers that didn’t involve wallowing in her own loneliness and isolation, Emma met David Nolan during the counselors program. Upon picking up bits and pieces about her, David decided to introduce Emma to his mother. As soon as Ruth met Emma, she was set on bringing her on as a permanent fixture in their lives.

Having previously thought that she’d never find a place that wanted her, a place that wanted someone old by foster standards and jaded beyond reason, Emma was shocked. Not only was she wanted, she was _loved_. Despite the three year age difference, and the short time they’d been together, David became her best friend and brother, with Ruby a close second.

There was a shared passion of dancing between Emma and Ruby, and when they weren’t raking in the volunteer hours during the summer, they were saving every penny they earned from their respective guardians to take dance lessons one town over. And that’s the way it went until they graduated.

Remembering what happened after graduation always leaves Emma with a pit of shame in her stomach that feels a lot like indigestion, so when she wanders to the kitchen, she pops two antacids before starting up the coffee maker. It used to be worse, but time heals all, even wounds that don’t feel like they’ll ever scab over.

It’s time for their annual trip back, just two days away, and Emma has too much to do to spend her morning in a guilt trip over things that happened in the past. Instead, she wanders down the hallway to get Ruby up. There’s a whole list for her friend to complete today, and she’s pretty sure she’s also battling with a hangover from being out too late the night before.

She knocks, only twisting the knob and entering the room after hearing the faint groan of invitation. “Hey there, champ. Good morning!”

Ruby groans again, struggling to push her eye mask off her face and groping for the pain killers and water on her nightstand. She’s one of those drinkers that’s always considerate to her morning self – something Emma has always been in awe of. “You’re not the morning person, stop sounding so chipper,” Ruby instructs after drinking down half the water. She hauls herself to sit up, patting the edge of her bed for Emma to sit down. “What’s on your Snow-style agenda for the day?”

“I’m going to clean. _You’re_ going to wrap up the sub-let on the studio space. Graham is supposed to be down there around noon, so you’ve got time, but I need you to grab the costumes we’ll need for performance nights.” She leaves Ruby to get herself out of bed, and calls out that she’ll get breakfast started.

“Don’t break the toaster!” Ruby calls from behind door that Emma closes on her way out, and while Ruby can’t _see_ Emma rolling her eyes, she knows her friend will sense it. It was _one time_.

Leaving for Camp Hope has always been a little tumultuous for them, but after this many years, Emma thinks they’ve gotten a little better at it. There were a few years where they weren’t going back to work camp, and those are the years that make Emma’s heart ache most – more than the year she refuses to think about.

They closed the camp when Ruth’s health suddenly declined the year after the year-that-shall-not-be-named, and Emma and David only made the journey every week to tend the growing weeks and mend the deteriorating buildings the best they could. With Ruby’s help, they were able to keep the camp from falling apart, but the same couldn’t be said for them. Ruth passed the winter after Emma turned twenty, and she lost the closest thing to a mother she’d ever found.

Luckily, they had one more to hold their family unit together. A year after Emma met him, David met Mary Margaret Blanchard, better known to her friends as Snow, and Emma got to witness fairytale levels of Love at First Punch between them. Down the road, the wedding was a bit rushed, so that Ruth could watch her son get married. Years after the quick engagement and marriage saw them going stronger than ever.

For two years, the camp remained closed, but David and Snow, thanks to an off-hand comment from Emma, decided to reopen the beloved summer camp as an experience for adults. It took a whole other year until they could renovate everything up to standards, but it was worth it. The first year they opened again, it was so profitable and the waitlist was so long that they were easily able to expand and enhance the experiences.

Shaking her head, Emma realizes she’s spending way too much time reflecting and not enough time moving. Down the hall, she hears Ruby’s water start up, and knows she has until the time the taps shut off to get that woman some hangover worthy breakfast. Pouring herself a large mug of coffee, she takes three deep, scalding gulps to get herself going.

She’s just plating up some eggs and bacon, snatching a bagel from the toaster so Ruby can construct her own breakfast sandwich when the roommate in question comes ambling into the kitchen.

This is Emma’s favorite version of Ruby. Stripped of her makeup, without a product in the world in her hair post-shower, wearing an old t-shirt and boxers for her pajamas. Her usual persona is an elaborate mask, with the heavy makeup and killer manicure, flirtation just as exposed as her long, lean legs normally are. The short shorts and low-cut tops are standard everywhere but at home. That’s the Ruby that will likely crawl into her car bright and early in a couple days, but today she’s happy to spend time with average Ruby, and she’s happy when she _does not_ break the toaster again. There are small miracles, after all.

When both of them are settled at the breakfast bar with their food, they start talking strategy, both in prep for leaving and for camp itself.

“Are the costumes for the Waltz demo here or at the studio?” Emma asks as she alternates sips of coffee and bites of her pop-tart.

“The studio, I think. I’ll grab them when I meet with Graham and lock up everything else of ours.”

“Good. Don’t sleep with him this time, okay?”

“No promises,” Ruby says, a wicked grin spreading across her lips even as she tries to hide it behind her coffee mug.

At the very least, they might get a deal on the rent again, which is the only consolation Emma can think of. The rest of their day is a whirlwind, with Ruby taking care of the studio and Emma tidying up their apartment. She packs the bulk of their non-perishable foods to take with them, cleaning as she goes, until the whole kitchen is spotless. She also takes the time to write down the instructions and emergency numbers for Aurora, their downstairs neighbor that’s been kind enough to take care of their plants and fish while they’re gone.

It’ll be weeks until either one of them can make it back to the city, if they do at all, but Emma doesn’t mind. While she loves Ruby and living in the city, she gets her own cabin for the summer. They converted one of the old lodges into a dance/yoga studio, located just a short walk along the west trail from the main lodge. Behind said studio, they relocated one of the cabins and refurnished the whole place to act as the dance director’s housing for the summer. Thankfully, Ruby likes to throw herself into a multitude of activities, so she bunks in the staff cabins up the hill and leaves Emma to have her solitude.

Mostly, all that means is that no one will know that she’s in the studio putting in extra hours. Maybe this will be the year she can quit hunting down bail skippers and be able to focus on nothing but dancing. She can always dream, at least.

Ruby stops in only briefly to drop off a case of their costumes and check in, taking the time to change into a date dress and do her hair and make-up. She gives Emma a wink before she leaves and tells her not to wait up, before disappearing in a flurry of stiletto clicks and perfume. She doesn’t get home until late, when Emma is already tucked in her bed hoping to fall asleep. Her friend is humming and heads straight for the shower.

Emma’s not a bit surprised two days later when Ruby announces that Graham decided to pay more than they originally negotiated, and laughs at the wolfish grin on Ruby’s face as they throw their bags into the backseat and boot of the Volkswagen Bug that Emma’s had for years. They’re actually running on time for once, but Emma doesn’t expect that to last long, especially when, after only an hour, Ruby announces that she’s famished and starts calling out the name of food places they pass.

The trip to Storybrooke, on the coast of Maine, is one of Emma’s favorites. The scenic views from Boston onward are ones she’s familiar with, but that still lift her heart. The trip is only four hours if they don’t stop, but with Ruby’s pea-sized bladder, and her bottomless stomach, it’s more likely they’ll get there in five hours… if they’re lucky.

One year, it took them almost twice as long to make the journey because Ruby was chasing down the International Cryptozoology Museum and her cheap-o GPS meant that the museum (which was _on the way_ ) eluded them for hours until Emma screeched that they were done looking and if Ruby _really_ wanted to see it, they’d find it on the way home.

They found it on the first try on their return drive, and Ruby bought her the biggest cone of Rocky Road ice cream they could find at a nearby ice cream stand, to make up for the original disaster.

This job that they do, this ability to go up and demo and teach dances to the souls that will wander through the paths of Camp Hope, is only possible because of the popularity of the camp. The first year, Emma and Ruby would switch off every two weeks, with Ruby piling all her lessons into the two weeks she was home and Emma trying to catch ask many bail skips as possible in between her own lessons and classes. When the popularity of the camp became apparent, they were able to rent out their studio space to a few other dance teachers in the area while they took the whole summer to attend to the camp. It helps that David is able to pay them, and pay them well, for their time and energy.

Along the way, Emma has met the heartbroken and the heartbreakers, she’s met dreamers and lovers, she’s taught cynics and optimists, and she’s danced for every person in between. The two of them together have dealt with perverts and assholes, handsy men and women who don’t take “no” for an answer, and people who have gone on to contact them once the summer ends to continue their lessons in the city. It makes it all worth it, these months away from all the comforts of home, to spend their summers in another version of home.

Plus, thanks to an excellent network of friends in Boston, they never want for anything from home if they forget it. It’s all just a PayPal and overnight shipping away, really.

As Ruby climbs back into the car from their third rest stop, this thought comes in handy. “I left my favorite performance shoes by the door,” Emma groans out as her friend seatbelts in and starts the car.

“Good, because I forgot to grab my sleeping pills off my nightstand,” she says, grinning quickly and dropping the sunglasses back onto her nose.

“I’ll text Aurora now.”

With the promise of a package imminently to be sent their way, Emma relaxes as the last of their journey passes by outside the windows. She zones out to the sights, not perking up again until they hit the Storybrooke town limits. They’ll top off the tank and stop in to see Granny for lunch (second or third lunch by Emma’s count) before heading up to the campgrounds. Her car crawls by each familiar sight, and Emma smiles at the simplicity of it all – the never-changing nature of their sleepy little town. While she only officially lived in Storybrooke for three years, it’s still the only place she’s ever called home.

Granny is already outside by the curb when they pull up, and Emma takes a minute to let Ruby climb out of the car to reunite with her grandmother. It’s only after she sees their hug loosen up that she opens her door, languidly stretching as she unfolds herself from the passenger seat. Then it’s her turn for Granny to gather her up and hug her so hard that Emma’s back cracks. She won’t complain, it definitely eases the travel tension to get a hug from Granny. They’re ushered inside the small diner the elderly (and boy, would be lose her shit if Emma said that term out loud) woman has run for the last billion years.

“When should I expect the first package from your neighbor?” Granny asks after their lunches have been set in front of them.

Ruby laughs, not even ashamed of the fact that they’re so predictable that her grandmother knows they’ve already left something behind.

“We’ll be back in town over the weekend to get it,” Emma answers.

“I already saw one of the trucks of shipment head up to the campgrounds,” Granny remarks as she refills Ruby’s coffee cup. “Your brother has been up there for weeks getting everything ready.”

“Please tell me he’s at least eating.”

“Snow has badgered him back home a couple times now to eat and sleep, and she picks up meals on the days they decide to stay up there. Sounds like you’re gonna have a full camp most of the summer.”

“That’s the plan,” Ruby says, beaming before she takes the last bite of her sandwich.

Emma waves them both off when they move to go into the back for more family time. It’s not that she and Ruby don’t get to visit ever, it’s just that the stretch between Christmas and camp time can sometimes feel like much longer. The same itch resides just below her skin – the need to see her brother and sister-in-law so strong that she almost slips away before she’s done eating and leaving Ruby to hitch a ride out later with one of the counselors that lives in town.

Instead, she idly swirls her onion rings through her ketchup, taking her time with making sure every crumb is gone from the plate while she waits. She glances around, waving to the familiar faces in the booths and at the counter beside her, and she grins at the large board already propped near the entrance that loudly welcomes the campers to town. Since the grounds are two miles north of Storybrooke, many will pass through on their way. Some will stay overnight in the bed and breakfast while others will stop for a bite and a fill-up before continuing on to Camp Hope.

Thankfully, the business that the camp brings to the town will mean that the owners of most, if not all, of the establishments will have their pockets lined for months to come, making the onslaught of guests and visitors worth it when the summer ends and they go back to something less than a speck on the map of Maine.

Ruby and Granny are back a short time later, while Emma is idly catching up with a sweet yoga teacher that goes by Tink. The name is fitting of the cherub-faced woman with the perfect curly bun of blonde hair on top of her head. She’s new to the staff, but not to the town, so Emma is happy to listen to her excitement bubble over as she discusses all the classes she’ll be teaching for the next few months.

“A little help?” Ruby asks, and Emma finally glances up to see her friend’s arms laden down with several bags of what Emma assumes are home-cooked meals, prepared in advance and packaged for the crew that’s already working on getting the grounds ready for the summer. She moves around the counter to take a few of the cloth totes, waving farewell to Tink as they head out.

The rest of the afternoon passes quickly; they use the main entrance to deliver the food to Snow, who’s waiting for them beneath the welcome sign when they pull up. Emma hugs her tight before transferring two of the bags to her. They make the short trek down to the main lodge where Emma gets to give her brother his own hug, tight and bracing and full of the warmth she misses when she’s away from him for so long. With lunch delivered, Ruby and Emma head back up to the car to move it to the staff parking.

The lodges they’ll each be staying in are much closer to their hidden lot than they are the main entrance, which works out well when they’re unloading enough luggage for four months, and maybe a kitchen sink or two. It takes them three trips up and down the steps leading to the lot: one to Ruby’s space in the staff lodges, one to Emma’s private lodge, and one to the studio itself.

Emma wastes no time turning on all the lights and stepping up onto the vast wooden floor. There are mirrors lining one wall, floor to ceiling, and another has all the cabinets where they store their costumes and gear. The wall opposite her reflection has windows spaced evenly apart, which she immediately starts working open even as Ruby brings in the last tote of their stuff. The air is a little stagnant, but flipping on the overhead fans will get it moving again.

Ruby drops the last container with their gear, rushing out to choose her space and start unpacking as soon as she can and promising to come back later to help get the studio in order. Emma waves her off, already itching to have the space to herself. Her muscles are practically begging to be warmed up, to take advantage of the wide open space that calls her name.

She knows she needs to clean first; the mirrors and windows all have that faint tinge of grime that comes from a long winter of neglect. The air conditioning unit needs to be tended to, as well, and tested to make sure it’s in working order before the summer starts in full. Then there’s the cleaning and organizing and stocking and… and Emma doesn’t care. She rips open the first bag she finds and pulls out leggings and a sports bra – they’ll do in a pinch. She changes quickly before skipping along the path back to the studio.

It’s only a matter of time before she’s selected something with an upbeat tempo, thankful again for the auxiliary port that allows her to play her own music from the impressive sound system. She sits on the dusty floors for a moment to slip on a beat up pair of practice shoes and lamenting again how she’ll have to turn her focus to cleaning next.

She takes her time stretching, making sure to work out all the kinks from the drive up and getting her muscles and body all warmed up. As soon as she’s on her feet, she’s running through swing patterns that she can do on her own. Through lines of sailor shuffles and slides, she dances using the whole dance studio, going from one end of the spacious floor to the other. She doesn’t get this much room in Boston. She doesn’t get this solitude. She doesn’t get this _freedom_. Maybe this is the real reason she loves coming back to camp so often, and there’s probably something in her psyche to deal with in those regards but it’s nothing she’s willing to look too closely into.

By the time the playlist switches to something for cooldown, Emma has worked up an impressive sweat. She grabs a towel from the same bin she found her shoes in, wiping down her face and neck before dropping back to the floor for final stretches. Placing the towel on the floor, she stretches out briefly, staring up at the ceiling and watching the fans whirl peacefully above her. This is it. This is home for the next couple months. And nothing will change how happy she is to be here.

With that thought, and a beatific smile, Emma changes back to her tennis shoes and hauls herself off the floor. There’s hours of cleaning ahead of her, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Killian discovers his summer destination, much to his chagrin. Meanwhile, Emma discovers a camper on the walk back to her cabin one night. All things start with simple introductions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! So I decided that once a week is too long to go between updates. Instead, it looks like I'll be doing two chapters a week. This one runs a little long at almost 8k, so enjoy!

He figured he’d wake up at an airport, with Liam rousing him as he parked the car and herded Killian into the terminal to make their way to whatever gate for whatever destination his brother picked. A quick nap was all he needed.

_“Let me choose,”_ Liam had said. _“It’ll be a surprise.”_

It certainly _is_ a surprise to lift his head when the car comes to a stop. He looks out the window, but instead of seeing long-term parking, he’s looking at trees. With a confused grumble, Killian lifts the sunglasses off his face and peers around, unable to focus on anything the signs say, or figure out where the bloody hell they might be. He wants to ask Liam where they are, but the sudden stop in motion means that his stomach and equilibrium are in disagreement, and before he can question anything, he’s throwing open the door to lose the rest of the liquor left in his stomach from his last night out on the town.

A woman walking a Pomeranian looks on aghast, but he only notices that once he’s straightening up. He makes eye contact briefly, grimacing as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He wonders if he should apologize or wave it off, but before he can do anything, Liam is nudging his arm and Killian turns to see the bottle of water he’s being offered.

The woman is forgotten, and Killian closes the door before adjusting his seat upright and accepting the water. “Thanks,” he croaks out, carefully twisting off the top with the bottle propped between his knees before lifting and just barely remembering to not chug it. “Where are we?”

“A rest stop. I need to use the facilities and figured some cold drinks would be nice. That’s the last bottle I brought on the road.”

“There are no rest stops on the way to the airport, so let’s try that again. Where are we?”

“Maine. Just crossed the border a bit ago, actually.”

“What, Logan wasn’t good enough for you? Thought you’d save a penny by driving to the middle of bloody nowhere and flying out of there? Please tell me the plane has an engine and isn’t powered by pedals.”

“We won’t be needing an airplane this time around, brother.”

At this news, Killian slips his sunglasses back on his face so he can scowl without squinting. “Please, do continue.”

“We’re about an hour from our destination. I thought we’d try something new.”

“What happened to that grand European adventure you proposed last week?” Killian interrupts, throwing his hand and prosthetic in the air in agitation. “What about visiting home and family and all that rubbish?”

“You honestly didn’t want to go visit Aunt Milly, did you?”

“No, but I did envision a night or two in my old stomping grounds. Couple good rounds in the pubs and such.”

“This will be much better, I think,” is what Liam ends up responding. There’s an underlying hint of ‘ _for you’_ that he doesn’t say out loud but Killian still hears it. Suddenly, he’s thinking of some dry town or a rehab facility and it takes everything he has to not lose his temper out the door with his breakfast (okay, so there was no breakfast in there, but the point remains…)

“Well, go on then,” he finally responds. “What’s to be found in the bloody state of Maine?”

“It’s called Camp Hope.”

Killian groans – a theatrical sound that knows no boundaries – and resists the urge to crumple this half-full bottle in his hand. “Please don’t tell me you’re sending me off to some alcoholics’ dry camp.” It’s all his worst nightmares come to fruition.

“Nothing of the sort, actually. Just a place for adults to go and meet new people and learn new things.”

“Brilliant,” Killian deadpans. He pauses a moment, searching his memory for something. “Oh bloody hell, this is that damn pamphlet that was in my mail last week, isn’t it?” Liam just chuckles while he slides further into his seat to endure the rest of the drive. He hopes above all hopes that the flask of rum he packed in his suitcase will last the whole length of time they’ll be at this stupid camp.

_Summer camp for adults,_ he grumbles internally. _Is he bloody mad?_

But he can’t say anything out loud. What will he do, demand that Liam turns around? It’s a week or two, at most right? That’s how most camps usually last, if memory serves.

He manages to stay awake the rest of the trip, with no other objections from his stomach. It’s not until they pass through a small town – if you can even call it that – that he speaks up and asks about lunch.

Liam pulls up outside a ramshackle little diner, a small patio with tables dotting the front beyond the small wooden arbor over the walkway. Inside the diner, every table is filled, and there are luckily two spots left at the bar that they take up as they walk in. An older woman with white hair and an arched eyebrow takes their order, glancing through the spectacles balanced on her nose when she reads it back to them.

“Give us a couple minutes, dears. As you can see, we’re a little busy with the camp traffic passing through.”

They both nod, Liam in an amicable way and Killian’s short and jerky, as he realizes he needs something in his stomach to sop up the rest of his hangover. He excuses himself to the restrooms after two waters are placed in front of them, and he wanders the narrow back hallway to push through the door.

The odd thing about this place is that it still somehow feels homely without him ever having stepped foot inside before. It’s temporary comfort though, with the thought that he’ll be going to some kind of weird adult camp for a couple weeks. He’s picturing barren cabins, or worse, tents. He shudders at the thought of communal showers and a lack of temperature regulation.

When he returns, the food is already placed in front of his seat. “I thought she said to give it a couple minutes,” Killian idly comments as he settles back in and starts picking at the fries.

“Apparently, she was quite literal about that time length.” Liam’s happily chewing away, and Killian shrugs once before starting on his own food.

It turns out, small-town diner-types are delicious. It’s been a length of time he can’t even recall since he’s eaten something this genuinely home-cooked that wasn’t made by his brother. He hums in content as he finishes, managing to smile despite his earlier unhappiness at the circumstances he found himself in. Liam smiles back at him, motioning to the proprietress to inquire about desserts while Killian watches people filter in and out.

During the short time they’re in the diner, there’s a never-ending change of faces around them. People order, they eat, they pay, then they’re gone and someone else is taking their place. And the whole time, the woman who insists they just call her “Granny” keeps cool and calm. All of her workers do, too, from the wait staff to the kitchen, which they can see through the window where the food is placed before quickly being whisked to the appropriate guest. The big city establishments could learn a lot from this woman, in Killian’s opinion, and he tells her as much as they pay and stand to make their exit.

She smiles, then, her whole face taking on that grandmotherly appearance that Killian never knew he craved in his life, and her eyes crinkling. She tells them to have a good time and to stop back in on their way home, looking like she’s _this close_ to patting or pinching both their cheeks when they finally say their farewells.

As they get back on their way towards camp, Killian even warms up to the idea a little bit. “Tell me more about what you’ll be subjecting me to, brother.”

“From the website, it looks like they have heaps of options. Pretty much everything we would’ve gotten to do if we’d ever gone to Camp Sherwood back home. I’m particularly looking forward to kayaking and hiking. Did you ever stop to think how city we’ve become since moving here?”

“No, not particularly. But I also tend to stick to three or four locations while you’re the one always wanting to try something new,” Killian remarks, even going so far as to throw up air quotes at the end and mimic his brother’s exuberance when he’s trying to badger Killian out of his solitude.

“You’re turning into a miser at such a young age,” Liam says, reaching over and trying his hardest to ruffle Killian’s hair without taking his eyes off the road. He’s able to easily swat away the affectionate move and chastises Liam to keep driving all in one go.

So it’s a miracle that he’s smiling when they pull up and Liam tells the parking attendant at the end of the drive that they’ll be booking for the summer pass. The poor thing looks startled when, from the passenger seat, Killian goes all high-pitched and screechy when he demands to know, and she would later quote, “what the bloody hell they’re going to do for a _whole_ summer?”

“You’re the _worst_ brother!”

“You agreed to the whole summer when it was Europe,” Liam says calmly, guiding the car through the lanes until he finds an open parking spot. “The scenery might not change as much but that doesn’t mean we can’t find new things to do the whole time we’re here. _Live_ a little, Killian. And do it adventurously. You’ve a whole list of new things to try now.”

“Aye, tell me, how many of those can you do with _one bloody hand_?”

“Plenty,” Liam responds succinctly. “I’ve looked through the whole list, little brother. I wouldn’t bring you somewhere if you couldn’t do anything while we were here. You have to trust me on this.”

Killian grumbles in response. A _lot_. But he still gets out of the car at Liam’s prodding and slings his backpack over his shoulders. There’s a young man at their assistance in the blink of an eye, helping them load their bags onto a trailer attachment on the back of a golf cart. Liam immediately strikes up conversation with the attendant, who introduces himself as Henry.

“This is my first summer as a full-timer but I’ve been driving the carts for two years,” he admits, his voice just beyond that dip that happens after puberty, and Killian wonders if they should worry at all for their safety in the hands of what looks to be someone still in middle school. As if reading Killian’s thoughts (or perhaps the blatant expression on his face), the lad smiles and climbs behind the wheel. “I’m eighteen,” he informs them, motioning for Killian to slide onto the backseat as Liam is already occupying the front one.

With a move that he’s absolutely sure is for his benefit, the cart takes off at a fast clip, jerking Killian on the seat just once. He turns his head in time to see the absolutely innocent look on Henry’s face, but a shit-eating grin on Liam’s. A few curse words _may_ be muttered under his breath, but mostly, he just settles back and shuts up.

A broad sign arches over a main entrance, which Killian doesn’t see until after they’ve gone under it. He twists in order to read it backwards, but Killian can still see the carved letters proudly proclaiming a welcome to Camp Hope, and he does his best to swallow his apprehensions again. They stop briefly in order for Liam to check them in for their accommodations. Killian joins him, handing over the required identification when asked and sliding back onto his seat when it’s clear he’s no longer needed.

Liam dumps the welcome bag in Killian’s lap upon returning, and he opens the tote long enough to extract one of the two keys and hand it up to Liam. There’s also what looks to be a map of the grounds, various schedules, and some free merchandise. He fishes out a bottle opener in muted glee, because if there’s a bottle _opener_ , then surely there are bottles to be opened.

True to his word, Henry zips them across the camp with ease, passing several other carts on their way back from delivery. He points out various buildings that they’ll need, including an explanation of the color coordination on the map that Killian’s yet to look at. Yellow is the main lodge, according to the lad. Green buildings are for outdoor activities and related. Blue buildings are for indoor hobbies.

“Can I tie-dye a t-shirt while I’m here? Macramé?”

“If you’d really like, yeah,” Henry responds, completely nonplussed by Killian’s sarcasm. “There’s a crafts building that offers a variety of classes, like pottery and painting. And yeah, even things like tie-dyeing.” There’s another sly look from their driver, but Killian doesn’t respond, instead choosing to let him have that point.

The whole place is bigger than Killian would’ve figured; for one, it takes them much longer to get to the cabin designated as theirs and it’s only after they’ve passed a few other clusters of similar cabins. Henry informs them that the small, hotel-like sleeping center is located north by the parking lot, intended for those guests only staying a matter of days.

They’re in the unfortunately named Dwarf Camp, which seems to have eight cabins in almost a perfect circle.

“Snow couldn’t let go of the fairy tale theme when they reopened the place,” Henry explains, as if either of them had asked. “So these ones are all named after the dwarves. There’s a cluster of bigger cabins for groups that’s named after the fairies from _Sleeping Beauty_ , and the camp next to yours is named after Ariel’s sisters.”

“Wait, if these are named after the dwarves, why are there eight?”

Henry raises an eyebrow at Killian, his lips quirking up in a smile that makes him look even younger but wiser than his years. “Haven’t you ever heard of the eighth dwarf?”

“You must be joking.”

Henry doesn’t respond to that, just slows to a stop outside a cabin at nearly the farthest end of the circle. Through the trees, Killian can see the water beyond, and it’s the first time he feels like Liam did something right. Looking at the placard above the door, however, he groans. At least they didn’t get Cabin Grumpy, he decides.

They’re waved away to unlock the door and head inside, which Killian takes no issue with. He does grab his backpack and the welcome tote, using his own key to unlock the surprisingly sturdy door and swinging it inward.

The common area of the cabin is more spacious than Killian would’ve expected, taking up the entire front of the building. Henry explains the specifics as he hauls in their bags, asking which room to take each suitcase as Killian glances around at the efficient use of space. There’s a kitchenette on one end, a small table with two chairs tucked against the front wall with the picture window above it, and a living room with a couch in front of a modest television set.

“Killian?” Liam’s voice jolts him out of his examination, and the look on his brother’s face tells him that wasn’t the first attempt to get his attention. “I asked if you wanted the room on the left or the right.”

Henry is still standing there, expectant look on his face and one large suitcase propped beneath each hand.

“Whichever has a better view of the water,” Killian says, and Henry jumps into action when Liam indicates which bag to take to fill that request.

With their bags delivered, Henry returns to the front of the cabin, pausing just inside the door. Liam hands him a bill for a tip, and Henry beams harder at him if it’s even possible. “I’m the junior concierge for this cluster, so if you need anything at all, my number is listed on the contact sheet over here.” With one last wave, he’s out the door and jogging back to the cart, presumably to aid with another check in.

The whole interior of the cabin is decorated in knotty pine, down to the furniture, but it all speaks of age. Everything has a fine sheen of remodel on it, but the whole structure seems to be much older than Killian would have originally wagered.

At the clearing of Liam’s throat, Killian turns again to see his brother standing in the kitchen area, holding the cabinet open and pointing inside. “See? I even asked for them to stock a few specialties for us.”

Peering in, Killian barks out a laugh. There are two bottles inside (amongst a few other things he’ll inspect later): one is a bottle of his favorite rum, and the other is Liam’s whiskey of choice.

“I suppose that comes close to answering if this place has a bar or not,” Killian says as he gestures to the bottles. “Go on, then. Let’s give it a proper toast.”

Obliging, Liam pulls two glasses out of another cabinet, pouring a small ( _so_ small) measure into each one before bringing them over to the table.

“To a summer of discovery,” Liam says, clinking his glass against Killian’s.

“Aye, or something like that.” It’s not the most rousing toast he’s ever heard, or given, but it does the trick in a pinch and they sip instead of take them as shots. It’s early, and while Killian normally has no qualms about drinking at _any_ time of day, let alone in the afternoon, he also knows he’ll want to unpack and change and give his brother the illusion that he’s not as much of a fall-down drunk as he used to be.

As it turns out, the first thing Killian does upon his arrival at Camp Hope is take a nap. The bed, while not as big as the one he has at home, is soft and inviting. The cabin is still cool enough that he only has the fan on and the windows open, with the faint sounds of water moving just beyond the trees, and it all combines with the hangover and travel experience to serve as the perfect lullaby.

Liam’s rustling in his own room and the living room is what finally brings him back to awareness, and just in time for his brother to push open the door the rest of the way and smile brightly at him.

“Good! You’re awake. Dinner will be served in the main lodge starting in half an hour. Shall we get cleaned up and see what the rest of this home away from home has to offer us?”

“We don’t have to eat every meal with total strangers, do we?”

“Of course not. That’s why we have our own kitchenette. But unless _you’ve_ packed a whole meal’s worth of groceries in your bag, we _do_ need to eat tonight.”

Amidst a little more grumbling, Killian follows by example and goes to one of the shirts he managed to hang. Navy blue, minimum wrinkles, button down for dressy, yet casual, just in case – he decides it’s a good choice and only goes to shut the door as he shucks off what he wore in the car and changes into something a little less rumpled. He saves the shirt for last, going instead to the washroom after Liam is done in order to splash his face with water and brush his teeth and hair.

Dinner is noisy; that’s the only way Killian can think to describe it. There are droves of people milling about the main lodge, all huddled around the host’s station waiting to be seated. He manages to keep it together through the wait for their table, and even when he keeps getting jostled by people passing by.

He holds steady all the way until they’re back in their cabin for the night, not even remembering what he ate, only that he did, before closing himself away in his room and drinking from his flask until its empty. Luckily, he’d wished Liam a goodnight when they walked in, making it clear he was done socializing for the evening. He could go out and get the bottle in the kitchen, but that’s too much effort. This will do for tonight.

There were too many people – questioning eyes, loud voices, unfamiliar faces – and it all compounded into an anxiety Killian didn’t know he had. The habits he sticks to at home are filled with strangers, as well, but at least there are always less of them. It’s always on his terms. This… this is something he hasn’t dealt with in a long time.

He falls asleep to the muted sound of the water trying its best to soothe him, even if he’s still wondering how he’ll make it a whole summer at this hellish place.

The next day begins bright and early, with Liam trying to rouse him to go to breakfast.

“Just grab something for me on your way out?” He puts on an expression just a little helpless, a little pouty, and Liam readily agrees.

Somehow, from that moment onward, he’s able to avoid what he views as the worst of the camping experience. While Liam gives him daily run-downs of the activities and lessons going on around the camp grounds for the day, Killian loses himself further and further into the bottle (plus a couple more he manages to get his hands on) in the kitchen cabinet.

It works out well; Liam keeps himself busy all hours of the day with one thing to the next and Killian keeps himself drunk or close to it as much as he can.

After a week, he manages to find a system and a schedule to stick to in order for Liam to remain happy with his absence. Killian notices that if he cleans and otherwise keeps the place tidy, Liam doesn’t even _try_ to get him to participate. And Killian is always attempting to keep the pantry stocked, but going to the market request is almost worse than going to the main lodge, in his opinion.

It’s located directly next to the building and no one ever seems to move with urgency from the large board with all the numbers to write down on the order sheet. He just wants to write his list, submit it to the attendant inside the kiosk, and leave, but it usually takes him twice as long as he wants it to. On this particular trip, he accidentally tramples the back of someone’s heel. He barely manages to avoid getting hit by a long braid of blonde hair belonging to that heel, ducking and offering a hurried apology as he hastens to the other side.

“So _many_ bloody people,” he mutters under his breath, just doing his best to find a place to prop up and mark his items off so he won’t have to do this again for another couple days.

He just barely manages to avoid that same blonde after he hands in his slip, side-stepping and almost knocking himself off balance in a Hail Mary move to avoid running into the woman again. He glances up for just a moment, another apology dying on his lips as he sees her face, her eyes, that one skeptical eyebrow, the tempting upward tilt of her lips where there’s definitely the hidden kiss of _Peter Pan_ lore.

Because he turns so fully to see her, Killian slams directly into the side of the lodge. With a curse, and with his embarrassment coloring all the way up to the tips of his ears, he leaves as quickly as he can and hopes to never see the lass again.

-x-

Normally, when Emma gets to camp, her lessons go one of two ways, with some exceptions.

Either the guests start off as shit dancers and get better once everyone gets into the swing of things, or it starts out okay but dips rapidly as everyone _tries_ to get their shit together. Sometimes, rarely, things start off great and stay great.

This year defies all previous experiences at camp, so far. Things start as shit and don’t get better. No one gets their shit together. Her toes are bruised and just below a point of bleeding, and _will_ actually bleed if these guys don’t stop staring at her tits long enough to learn the dance steps she’s trying to teach them. Her left ankle is still healing from where some guy caught the back of it the week before, which isn’t helping.

Okay, it’s not _all_ bad. The staff rec lodge parties are what get her through each week. Although David and Snow would largely frown upon her actions, she’s snuck into the storage closet two weeks in a row to neck like a teenager with two new staff members. There’s no actual rule about fraternization with other staff members (mostly because her brother and sister-in-law are realists even in the face of their never-ending optimism); guests are strictly off limits but as long as it’s not on camp time and they aren’t in the middle of the Main Lodge, the owners pretend like they don’t have a bunch of horny, overly hormonal adults working for them for a whole summer.

So while everything else during the day can currently go to hell, _this_ is what she has to look forward to at the moment.

It’s different now at twenty-eight than it was when she was a junior counselor. She only fools around with the ones that get her rhythm, and she makes sure they don’t work anywhere near the dance studio. She doesn’t even know their names – she finds the less she knows about somebody the better it is. Knowing more is kind of like naming a wild animal: she doesn’t want to get attached.

They all share responsibility for closing up the rec lodge; this is Emma’s week to be the adult, so after making sure the lodge is cleaned and locked up, Emma begins her short trek back to her cabin. The living arrangements have been the best part of camp, so far. While both of her possible partners have asked to come back to her cabin to finish off the evenings, she’s declined both of them. This is one bed she wants to herself, and no staff debauchery is going to change that.

She’s just about to make the turn up the path to her cabin when she spots a shoe on the path. People losing shoes is a real thing that happens all the time around here, but that’s not what stops her. This particular shoe is still attached to someone. In a rush, Emma’s by the side of who she assumes is a camper.

_Oh shit,_ is her first thought, followed by _why didn’t I take that damn first aid class with Ruby last month?_ But all it takes is a quick scan to see he’s breathing, he’s not visibly bleeding, and if she gets just an inch closer she’ll be able to practically inhale the rum he’s all but soaked it. The smell of liquor wafts off him like he dabbed it on as cologne.

“Hey buddy, you okay?” Emma chances to ask. If he’s injured and she can’t see it, she’ll have to go to the on-call medic and she really doesn’t feel like dealing with Victor right now. She gently prods the camper’s arm, poking a finger into his bicep. She does another visual sweep, this time for her own records instead of trying to find signs of injury or life.

He looks a mess, sprawled in the mulchy underbrush just to the side of the path. His clothes look a little wrinkled, his hair is just a touch past disheveled, and his jaw is slack and open as he emits a loud, saw-like snore.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Emma mutters, digging her finger in a little harder this time. “ _Hey_ , get up!” One, two, three more jabs using her whole hand to shove his arm this time, and then he’s jolting. The snore cuts off and his eyes blink open, wide and wild and confused with too much alcohol. His gaze barely flits across her before he’s looking back up at the trees – his expression changes to one of disgust after he sees those, for some reason.

“Bloody hell, I’d hoped it was all still just a nightmare. Stupid arse brother of mine, stupid summer camp for adults,” he opens his mouth to damn something else of his experiences but seems to remember he’s not alone. He focuses on her as much as he can, going so far as to close one eye. “Aye, but you’re quite real, aren’t you?”

She can’t help it. She bursts out laughing. Through her fits of giggles, she manages to spit out that he looks like a pirate. “We could give you a proper eye patch and a hook and you’d fit the title perf- oh, fuck, I’m so sorry!” It’s only as he struggles to sit up during her amusement that she catches the fact that he only has one hand, the left one catching the stray lights from the safety lamps along the pathway. Her eyes go wide, and she looks at his face to gauge how lawsuit-y in trouble she is, but all that greets her is vague confusion.

“Is the pirate joke because of the hand or the rum?”

“Actually, it was because of the way you were talking and because you were squinting at me. And yeah, also the rum. I didn’t even realize the hand thing until you sat up.”

He looks down at his own false hand, now propped in his lap, still with one eye closed. “Huh. All right.”

“Okay, buddy. We need to get you back to your cabin or room, whatever.”

He makes a sound of aggravation, even as Emma moves to help him stand. “Back to that bloody cabin and my brother snoring through the paper-thin walls.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re hammered enough that you won’t even notice it once you hit that bed, pal.”

“Killian.”

“What the hell is a Killian?”

“I am a Killian,” he says with a dramatic finger jab to his own chest. Emma catches that hand and pulls, trying her best to balance out when he stands and tilts forward. They almost end up back on the ground but she steadies him at the last second.

“Nice to meet you, Killian. Now which way do I go?”

“It’s only polite to give your name in return, love.” Even though she tries to pull him towards the cabins, he digs his heels in, now surprisingly steady in the face of his stubbornness.

She grinds her teeth, wanting nothing more than to be in her own bed. Her first lesson is scheduled for 10am and it’s close to 1am at this point. She can see those hours subtracting as she stands there so she gives in easier than she normally would. “Emma. Emma Swan.”

“Swan. Seems rather fitting for someone so feisty and graceful, from what little I’ve seen.” He smiles, and his eyes clear a little, and Emma has to hold her breath and count to ten because holy _shit_ he’s _gorgeous_ when he looks like that. It helps that the lights catch his eyes just the right way and she’s enchanted by the blue, and with the way his lips quirk up so he’s smirking at her, and the way his eyebrow arches as if it’s moving independently from the rest of his expression.

Her mouth opens to respond, but that’s the exact moment that her new friend _Killian_ lurches forward and throws up. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t have happened at all, but in her perfect world, it could’ve at least gone off to the side.

Nope. All the way down her front. _All the way_. Her only thought that rises above the grossed-out aspect is that thank god she didn’t just get done performing, because if this had been a dance costume, no one would’ve convinced her the murder wasn’t justified.

“Cabin Bashful,” he grumbles out meekly, barely able to make eye contact. “I’m terribly sorry, lass.”

It’s as they begin the very long, very awkward walk back to Cabin Bashful that Emma realizes that he’s the guy that she ran into in the grocery kiosk last week. When she ran into him there – or rather, when he stomped on her heel and then slunk away as quickly as possible – he was hunched in a way that she’s not used to seeing at the camp. The guests are usually here for a break, so most (if not all) of the campers she’s met in the last so many years, have all been happy. Pleasant, at the very least. So that’s two strikes against him in Emma’s book.

Once she makes sure he’s safely back in his cabin, Emma hastens back to her own and immediately strips down. The clothes and shoes all go in a bag to be washed in Storybrooke the next day. She rushes through her shower, brushing her hair and letting it fall loose to dry while she sleeps. It’ll be a mess, but it would’ve happened anyway as the humidity keeps ramping up with each new day.

And she was right; by the end of her early lesson with a man hoping to impress his girlfriend back home, Emma’s hair is poofing out around her head. The majority of it is balled up in a bun but she feels like she has to look as frazzled as she feels.

She relinquishes the studio to Tink after her lesson, happy to get back to her cabin and wash up again. It’s not that it’s too hot yet – this is June in Maine, not Georgia, after all – but it’s still her favorite part of the day to shower off the sweat and change into clothes that don’t expect a workout. With a scrunch of her nose, Emma looks at the bag of clothes from last night and wonders if Ruby has anything to go to town. She wants to visit Granny and check their studio email account, anyway, so she might as well make a trip of it.

The staff lodges are swarming with activity, with various leaders and volunteers going in and out of the row of connected cabins. Ruby is sharing a cabin with a hiking pro, Mulan, and the door is wide open when Emma walks up the three steps that lead to the door.

“Knock, knock!” Emma calls as she walks up, smiling when the sight of Ruby sprawled on her bed greets her. Her nose is buried in a book, something Emma is used to seeing on calm days with Ruby.

“Hey, stranger! Nice moves last night!”

“I do my best,” she says, preening just a touch. Ruby snickers while she sits up, throwing her book on her nightstand. “Where’s Mulan?”

“Beginner hike today. She’ll be back in a couple hours. I’m going with her on one of the intermediate hikes next week. Already broke in my new boots and everything!”

“You certainly seem to be getting into the camper spirit this year.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t realize how much I needed a break from dancing and waitressing until I got here. So, what’s up? What brings you up the hill to my cozy abode?”

“Laundry run. Had a drunk guest throw up all over me last night.”

She’s sure Ruby doesn’t _mean_ to laugh so hard or so loud, but Emma just sighs and takes it. “Oh, that would’ve been _hilarious_. I mean,” she pauses, trying to look apologetic, “awful. Must’ve been awful.” She just barely manages to hide her grin as she gets up and starts collecting a small sack of laundry. “Do you have any lessons for the rest of the day?”

“Not until after dinner. So I’m going to the laundromat, maybe eat lunch in town while I check email.”

“Bring me back a peach muffin,” Ruby instructs, handing over her laundry bag and a handful of quarters.

The drive into town is peaceful, and Emma makes sure to roll the windows down before she gets going so she can feel the wind whipping through the cab of her car. Also to make sure the bag of clothes in the backseat doesn’t smell up the interior.

Once the washer load is going and she’s said a prayer to the shoe gods that her slip-ons will survive, Emma heads to Granny’s with her computer. Halfway through her grilled cheese sandwich, Emma finds an email that she definitely was not expecting.

The sender is one Regina Mills, an old associate from Boston who moved to Portland, Maine a few years ago to open her own high-end hotel. The subject? Hiring potential full-time entertainment.

Emma scans the details that Regina has sent her way, talking about an audition period of sorts. There’s a line of events that she’s holding for the grand opening of the Mills Regency and each one will act as an audition of sorts. Emma and Ruby have been invited to participate, and a preliminary date and time are included in the message. It’s still a month away, enough time that they can schedule in some practices in the evenings when lessons are over for the day.

Before she even leaves town (muffins in hand for Ruby and a bag of food for David and Snow) Emma is already running through routines they could potentially do, what costumes they brought with them, and her mind is whirling.

She’s bubbling over to share the news when she gets back, but Ruby is either in the studio with a lesson or out on an adventure. Either way, she leaves the muffins and clean laundry in her friend’s cabin and practically bounces off to hers. After dropping off her own laundry (thankfully her shoes didn’t get ruined in the dryer), Emma heads off to the Nolan cabin to drop off their food from Granny.

Snow is busy at her desk when Emma walks in, and she holds up one slender finger to have Emma wait while she enters some number or another on the spreadsheet open on her computer. Once she’s hit the save button, she’s out of her chair and coming over to embrace Emma tightly before taking the bag of food from her.

“How’s it going? Have you had a lot of lessons so far?”

“You have my numbers on that spreadsheet, Snow. You already know I’m usually swamped during my available lesson times,” Emma says, a wry grin crossing her lips as her sister-in-law starts unpacking the containers and sorting them before sliding them into the fridge. Emma is actually surprised there aren’t labels for which day of the week each item should be consumed by on the clean shelves inside.

Snow is fastidious, at best, and anal retentive at her worst. Her summer may be filled with camping adults but the other months are taken up by being, very aptly, a school teacher. She has color coded files for everything, and the disposition of her namesake.

“Yeah, well, I like to hear it from the source sometimes. How’s Ruby?”

“Throwing herself into every activity possible. You know, the usual summer-Ruby-schedule.”

“I swear, she gets more out of this camp than some of the campers,” Snow says. She pauses in her task, opening one of the containers and inhaling deeply, a look of pure bliss crossing her features. “Please tell me you’re going back to town soon because I’m going to need more of Granny’s potato salad before the week is up.”

Emma chuckles, nodding when Snow holds up the container in invitation. Soon there are two plates on the table, along with forks and napkins, and Snow is hurrying back again to deliver glasses of homemade blueberry lemonade. She just ate her own lunch, but this is a meal she won’t say no to.

She doesn’t mention the job opportunity; David and Snow have been trying to get her to move closer to home for ages now and she doesn’t want to get their hopes up, in case she and Ruby don’t get a spot. Moving to Portland would be beneficial in so many ways, not limited to their proximity to home and the living expenses. She would be willing to give up bail bonds chasing if she didn’t have to worry so much about making rent and utilities every month.

So instead, she and Snow talk about the summer that still stretches ahead of them and the upcoming school year. They talk about the junior concierge employees that just got hired in. One of them, Henry, has been chasing Emma’s heels since he was a child. He’s on his first summer as concierge to a full group of the cabins and she thinks she’ll have to check in on him soon, but Snow assures her he’s doing a great job already.

“I met one of his campers last night. I’ll have to tell Henry to keep an eye on him so the guy doesn’t drink himself to death.”

Snow’s eyebrows pinch downward in a worried look, one that Emma knows all too well. “Is this someone I should be concerned about?”

“No, no. Nothing scary or threatening. Just a guy that likes to drink a lot. I’ll give Henry a heads up, just in case.”

“If you say so,” Snow responds. “Just let me know if anything happens again?”

“Of course,” Emma promises, reaching across the table to squeeze her sister-in-law’s hand. “So, Henry is in charge of the dwarves, and Violet is junior to the Neptune sisters. Who’s in charge of the fairies?”

“Jefferson is still doing most of the work, but he’s training Grace so she can save up some money and add the experience to her college applications. She’s determined to be an RA in her dorms wherever she ends up.”

“Where did we get such an awesome group of people?” Emma wonders out loud as she stops herself from licking the plate clean.

“Storybrooke,” Snow answers, grinning as she pushes her empty plate away and folds her arms on the table in front of her. “What time is your next lesson?”

“Not until later. I lucked out and had an empty schedule during the afternoon so I could take some time in town today.”

“David should be done checking the zip line structures. Wanna take the cart and go get him? I know he’s been hoping to run into you.”

Opening a camp for adults in the age of the internet has been the greatest thing ever, in Emma’s opinion. Especially after someone suggested last summer that they open a GoFundMe to purchase a small fleet of golf carts to get around the campsite easier. From the Nolan cabin to the zip lines would normally take longer than she would want to devote, but using their personal cart means that less than ten minutes later has her all the way in the woods at the end stop of the lines.

David is probably prouder of these than he would be if he had a piano prodigy as his own kid. He’s also the All-American Boy Scout type, so he spends once a week inspecting every single inch of the cables and platforms, every piece of gear used on the lines, and all the netting that acts as a failsafe in case he somehow misses a detail and something were to go wrong.

Just as Emma is pulling up, David is walking towards the clearing, his smile widening and his face lighting up at the sight of her.

“ _Finally_ , I get visual proof that you’re real. I was starting to think you were a figment of my imagination again,” he says as soon as they’re close enough. After Emma hops out of the cart he repeats the tight hug he gave her before camp opened – the last time she was able to do more than just text him – and her heart squeezes at the way his hand comes up to cradle the back of her head. He’s not even her biological brother but sometimes the bond between them feels so close she forgets he’s not a blood relative. And that’s okay with her.

“I’ll give you a ride back to your cabin. Tell me all about your camp time so far.”

True to his word, David takes the wheel and steers them back the shorter distance to her cabin, listening to the few stories she’s amassed for this camp session so far. It’s barely even a month in, but she still has plenty to tell.

“The air conditioner in the studio needs checked again,” Emma remembers as they pull up in front of her cabin. She only really remembers because she can hear the cooling system rattling loudly from where they are, and it’s been on the fritz lately. It was fine when the summer began, after she cleaned the studio from the ceilings down, but now that it matters it seems the damn thing wants to quit.

“I’ll try to get Leroy out as soon as possible, but I think it’s time to buy a new unit to replace the original one. Maybe even try to work central air into the budget for next summer if we can stretch the life of that sad, little unit.”

Emma beams at the possibility. “You better mean that. The only thing this studio lacks compared to our space in Boston is the reliable cool air.”

“If all I need is good air conditioning to keep you in Maine, I’ll get right on it,” he says, letting the engine idle as he ruffles his hair. “I gotta get back. I gave my lunch to Henry today for being such a good apprentice at inspecting.”

“Go. Go to your wife and all the food from Granny’s you could ever ask for,” she says, hopping from the passenger seat and waving goodbye as he goes.

“Hey!” Just as David pulls away, Ruby’s voice is pulling Emma’s attention in the other direction. “What’s this message you left about a job?”

“Ah! You got your muffins, then. Good. Come inside and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Instead of heading for the studio, Emma motions for Ruby to follow to her cabin. She still has to put her laundry away and change for the other lesson she scheduled for the day, so she figures it’s easier to cover all at once.

Just as Emma had done upon reading the email, Ruby’s excitement grows with the news about a possible full-time job. While they both love Boston, Ruby has just as much at stake to move closer to home. It would mean being closer to Granny, and visiting more often. It may not be their Broadway dreams, but it would be regular exposure where they could still set up a studio for lessons if they choose.

Ruby’s mind whirls along with hers, and by the time Emma’s cabin is back in order with all her laundry put away, they have practice time set aside for that evening after dinner. They have new routines to try out, and choreography to plan, and just a month and a half to prepare for their trial run.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a meeting like that, it can't get any worse, can it? Well, never say never. But by the end of the chapter, they've come to an agreement of sorts...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of you were rather aghast at the first official meeting. Well, sorry to say, it's still a little bumpy at the start of this chapter. But I promise, things very quickly turn around after! Plus, there's a bit of dance floor action in this chapter. Enjoy!

It takes two days for Killian to recover from the hangover he got from his night in the camp bar. He never should’ve bribed the bartender to part with that full bottle of rum the other night. In his defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Who knew a camp bartender would be so amenable, after all?

Liam is already out and about, which is unsurprising, even for how early it is. While his brother was adamant about this camp bringing about changes and chances for both of them, Liam has been so wrapped up in his own discoveries of what the camp has to offer that he’s mostly left Killian to his own devices. Thankfully, that applies to this morning’s shameful rising, as well.

The hangover is something he can deal with. The chagrin of his encounter with… Emily? Elsa? Anna? _Bloody hell_ , what was that lass’s name? The meeting with her, the beautiful angel in disguise that also distracted him in the small grocery kiosk a week ago, only to be sick all over her, was bad enough. Now he’s gone and forgotten her name.

Maybe today he can take it easy on the rum. Maybe it’s time to visit the activity board in the main lodge and look at the brochures for _anything_ he could use to fill his time. He needs to find something to do that doesn’t involve drinking excessively and passing out in odd places around the camp. Two nights ago was the first time he wasn’t safely back in his own room before the alcohol won over his system in the week and a half they’ve been here, and he never intended it to get so far. He doesn’t want it to get that far again, so maybe today can be one of rest from liquor and he can remember to eat a meal or two more than he’s been.

After a shower, he almost feels human again, enough so that he can wander down to the main lodge that towers over the rest of the campgrounds. It’s the first time he’s eaten a meal here since their first night at camp, but it’s not much different than that first experience. There are people bustling in and out, all adult, paired off or alone, but all with easy postures and smiles. Killian, on the other hand, is tense from the way his body is screaming for nutrition, his sunglasses perched on his nose to hide the bloodshot eyes that still haven’t cleared.

Astonishingly, he finds Liam eating at a table with a battered book sitting open beside his plate. It’s been ages since Killian has seen Liam do something as serene as read a book, so he’s almost hesitant to disrupt the peaceful scene in front of him, but he figures his brother might be pleasantly surprised to see him joining in, no matter how hungover he is.

“Well, well,” Liam starts as soon as Killian is in the seat across from him. “You’ve finally decided to join the land of the living again, then?”

“Aye, but no need to throw me a party.”

He can tell his brother is just short of clicking his tongue at him, but instead Liam continues. “Breakfast is a buffet. You can help yourself to as much as you’d like. I’ve been grazing on mine, so I’ll be here when you return.” The way he says it means that Liam intends to wait for him, not out of courtesy but as a means of checking on his younger brother.

With a barely restrained eye roll, Killian wanders over to where Liam indicated, looking over the choices first before grabbing a plate and selecting his breakfast. He’s grown so used to just eating granola or whatever Liam grabs for him, or whatever he pulls together in the small kitchenette, that he almost doesn’t know how to handle this many choices. It all looks to be homemade, too, which makes Killian wonder how they even manage to make this much food every day. Do they have elves humming “Hi Ho” back there as they scramble hundreds of eggs? Gnomes slicing fruit varieties? Have they got the magic brooms from that cartoon back there cooking endless heaps of bacon and sausage?

Whatever the case may be, Killian finds there are _too_ many options for the sensory overload he’s feeling. Bread sounds like a good start, though, so he grabs a slice and puts it in the toaster nearby while he picks and chooses a few other items to put on his plate. He’s just about to retrieve his toast when someone bumps into him, almost upending the plate from where it rests on his prosthetic before a hand shoots out to steady it.

“Sorry, I’m – _oh,_ hi. It’s you. Killian, right?”

In the daylight, and without the rum, the woman is still stunning but at least more approachable than his last two run-ins with her. The previous label of “angel” still seems rather apt. Her hair is braided again, sunglasses on top of her head, her green eyes curious but cautious for some reason. It probably has something to do with the fact that he doused her in his sickness less than forty-eight hours ago.

“Aye, I’m sorry again for our first unfortunate meeting. If there’s any way I can repay you, I’d be happy to. I just feel awful about it.”

“Just had to take my laundry into town a little earlier than I planned, that’s all. No harm done.”

“Nothing was destroyed by my behavior, I hope?”

“Nah, it was just my favorite t-shirt. No big deal or anything,” she says, the sarcasm eased by the way she smiles. She’s apparently joking, but the look on his face must reveal how aghast he is at hearing it was her favorite shirt. “It’s fine. I promise! I already hung it back up and everything, good as new. I _do_ have to teach in less than an hour, so if you’re gonna have a repeat performance, I need to know now so I have time to change.”

Killian chuckles, finally relaxing on the heels of her joke. “Teach?”

“I’m one of the dance instructors,” she tells him, leaning around where he’s still blocking the buffet to grab a banana. “You’re not my lesson, right?”

“No, thankfully not. It’ll be a surprising day in hell before I find myself willingly in a dance studio.”

She purses her lips together at that, taking offense in something he’s said, but she squeezes out something of a smile as she backs away a couple steps. “Yeah, well, it takes a certain kind of dedication to find something you’re good at. Good luck, Killian.”

“Um, thanks? Same to you, Emily.”

Her face quickly falls into a scowl after that. “Emma.”

“Shite,” he whispers, just wanting the day to be over already. Hell, wanting the whole summer to be over already if this is how it’s going to go when he tries to be sober for once. “Emma,” he repeats, but finds she’s already weaving her way out of the breakfast area with smiles and greetings for people she knows.

His toast is cold by the time he gets back to the table where Liam is observing him, one Jones eyebrow raised as he takes in Killian’s sour demeanor.

“You seemed chummy with the dance teacher. Have you taken a lesson?”

“Of course not, no. She was unfortunate enough to meet me the other night in a rather sorry state.”

“Ah, and that’s why I heard a female voice when you got in _rather_ late, then?”

Killian nods, more subdued after finding that Liam is more aware of his comings and goings than he initially assumed.

“Little brother, about your drinking…”

“Save it,” Killian says, cutting him off from continuing that thought. “I don’t need a lecture, and that’s _younger_ brother. I hardly qualify in the little, nor have I since I was a lad.”

He takes to angrily chomping on his dry, cold toast, not really much interested in eating now, but still needing to nonetheless. To his credit, Liam just sighs and goes back to spearing pieces of fruit from his plate between flipping pages of his book. They eat in silence until Liam has cleared his plate. Then, with a check of his watch, he bookmarks his spot and stands.

“Well, it was lovely catching up with you. I’ve got a couple things I signed up for today. If you’re interested in keeping yourself out of trouble, there’s a great little library off the main room here.” With a nod of goodbye, his brother is gone again, leaving Killian alone to eat and stew in his own thoughts.

In his continuous land of “maybe” he considers the fact that a book wouldn’t be a terrible waste of his time.

His thoughts, even after he’s selected a book and hidden himself away in a corner of the small library, seem to stray back to Emma. There’s something still missing from their encounter the other night, something about her name that waits to be uncovered from the alcoholic stupor he was in. He _does_ still feel bad about the sullying of her clothes, and he considers ways to make it up to her, despite her reassurances that it’s of no matter to her. If he didn’t know himself better, he’d think he was trying to come up with reasons to see her.

But that’s impossible, isn’t it? He hasn’t actively sought the attention of a woman other than one-offs in longer than he cares to remember. After Milah passed away, he was alone for a long time, and only after a year had passed did he start going out to meet women with the sole purpose of physical gratification. His attentions to Emma, as new as they are, don’t feel like attempts at a quick fling, and not only because he knows she’s off limits to a guest as a camp employee.

He runs into her several more times as he stops drinking _quite_ so much and starts leaving the cabin during the daytime. If Liam is surprised by his sudden interest in the camp’s amenities that don’t involve liquor, he doesn’t show it. And it’s not to say that Killian doesn’t still sip from his flask or drink to his content in the cabin at the end of the day.

The most illuminating trip out of his cabin is to watch a demonstration of dances offered for classes by Emma and another instructor named Ruby. Tucked in the back of the yet-again transformed main lodge (he swears that every time he goes to it the whole setup has changed), Killian watches in fascination as Ruby glides on stage first. Her hair is tied in a ponytail, long and straight and severe. Sure, she looks stunning, until Emma walks onto the stage to stand next to her. Then, he momentarily forgets that there are even two of them up there.

He can’t help it; he knows he’s staring. Both women are in the same dress, and their hairstyles are identical, but where Ruby’s red dress is eye-catching, Emma’s cobalt dress is downright captivating. The sleeves come down to her elbows, and the dress itself falls nearly to her knees except for a slit that shows a tantalizing amount of thigh when it flares out just the right way. Her make-up, even from this far away, is done in such a way that she looks like some film noir heroine reincarnated.

Killian spends as much time watching her face as he does trying to take in the whole dance, but if asked later what they were performing he’d be hard-pressed to give a solid answer. This is mostly due to his utter lack of knowledge on the subject, excepting for the Waltzes he learned back in grade school. Instead, he’s intently paying attention to the way her eyes scan the room before returning to her partner. He’s focused on the sultry way her smile changes between movements and the way her red lips seem even brighter when she grins with teeth showing.

After a number of performances, and a well-earned standing ovation, the two women circulate the room, talking to everyone for even a moment. Ruby seems to be the books, as she has her phone out while they go through setting up lessons and talking details with these potential new clients. She gets stopped up talking to one of the hiking guides, throwing her head back and laughing while Emma keeps circulating.

He sincerely considers ducking out of the lodge before Emma sees him, but once her eyes find him in the diminishing crowd, he’s powerless to move. He stands next to the chair he was rooted in for the entire performance, trying desperately to hold his hand still and not fidget with his prosthetic.

“Well, well,” Emma starts, her lips tilting up in something like surprise and welcome. “I thought it would be a cold day in hell before you watched a dance.”

“Until I do one meself,” Killian clarifies, finally losing the battle with his nervous habits as he rubs the back of his neck.

She hums in consideration. “I don’t know, you seemed pretty graceful for someone too intoxicated to even be able to stand. I’m sure if you gave it a shot, it wouldn’t be too bad.”

His mouth opens to respond, but before he can, Ruby is calling to her partner again and Emma is apologizing, bidding him goodnight with what seems like an unplanned hand on his bicep, and one last smile before she moves away. He stands there, watching as she goes, and so he gets to see the one time she glances over her shoulder at him (probably expecting him to have turned away and not still staring at her like a right git), her face unreadable as she turns back and hastens away after Ruby.

He forgets to drink himself to sleep that night.

It’s the middle of his third week at the camp when he finds his way to the dance studio, passing close to the scene of where Emma found him that night. He’s tried to keep himself away, but he feels a curiosity so strong that he’s quite unable to resist at this point.

There are windows, but the whole building is raised up, so that he can’t easily peer into them. Rather than try to take a hidden vantage point, he opens the heavy door and walks up the five steps until he’s even with the parquet floors. The room is brightly lit, with mirrors lining the one wall, but his focus is trained on Emma moving across the floor. There’s music playing, but it’s nothing compared to the symphonic way her body twists and turns.

He thinks to leave, to exit what is clearly alone time for the dancer he’s had such rough encounters with, but he’s mesmerized by her movements. It’s fitting, watching her move as she does, that he remembers at that moment that her last name is Swan, and he finds it utterly fitting to all aspects he’s seen of her personality thus far.

There’s clearly grace, especially with the way her arms arc above her head at the moment, and there’s fire. That was most evident the other night at their performance, watching her come at some of the dances like she’s attacking them. There’s beauty, of course, he’d never deny she’s one of the most attractive women he’s ever seen. But it’s more than her physical appearance that draws him in, particularly in this moment.

She’d remarked about the time it takes to find something one is truly passionate about, and he can read her years of study and practice like an open book as her feet move across the floor. She’s so focused in every aspect of this solo that she hasn’t even noticed him practically standing right in front of her. Her attentions are solely on her actions, with only passing glances to the mirrors to check form, he supposes.

It’s only when she turns to hold a pose, leaning forward with one leg raised perpendicular to the floor that her eyes finally focus on him. With a gasp, she loses her concentration and goes crashing to the floor, and Killian races up the rest of the steps to help her up.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she grumbles, hesitating before taking his hand and letting him haul her to her feet. “Just wasn’t expecting anyone. It’s my free hour. Do you need something?”

Need? No, definitely not. Want? That’s a whole different concept that he is coming to grips with.

“No, I was just passing by and thought I’d stop in. Are you sure you’re okay?”

She snorts, a low laugh coming from her as she moves towards the stereo to turn down the music. “I’ve taken harder falls.”

He watches as she moves to swipe a towel off the back of a nearby chair, dabbing her face and neck before throwing it back down and grabbing a water bottle instead. “So is that the sort of dancing you teach here?”

She smiles, even as she tilts the bottle upward to take a couple deep gulps. It’s only after she’s recapped the bottle and moved back into his general vicinity that she answers. “No, that’s my own personal dancing. I wanted to dance on big stages for most of my life.”

“And why aren’t you?”

“Tragic backstory, misfit past, the usual.”

“Ah, of course. I know a bit about those,” he says. He only notices that he’s fiddling with his prosthetic fingers again when Emma’s eyes are drawn to watch his movements – her expression one part wary and two parts curious. “Anyway, if you’re not teaching that kind of dancing, what do you teach?”

“Mostly just ballroom, like you saw the other night,” she comments, her gaze tearing away from his hands and meeting his eyes again. At his blank stare, she huffs once, rolling her eyes in the process of starting a series of stretches. “Fox Trot, Tango, Mambo, that sort of thing. You ever danced before?”

“I learned to Waltz when I was just a lad. Other than that, just the standard variety of three feet apart types at school dances and decidedly less innocent kinds while at university.” He tries to tame the smirk on his lips when he mentions the form of dancing they used to do in the youth that seems like forever ago, but fails miserably by the way she raises an eyebrow at him.

“You should see our staff dances at the end of the week,” she says, the way she wiggles her eyebrows indicating that she’s not only fully aware of the kind of dancing he’s referring to, but that she participates.

While he laughs, she moves to another stretch and he spots the angry red mark on her shin from her earlier fall. He cuts off abruptly, looking concerned even if it doesn’t seem like she notices it. “I seem to have caused you another misfortune.”

She hums out a question mark, and he points to the spot. Without breaking her stretch, Emma glances at it and promptly waves it off. “I’ve done worse. Nothing’s broken, I’m not bleeding; it’s fine.”

“Oh, you’re a tough lass, eh?”

Rather than responding, she sizes him up for a minute before turning fully towards him. “You wanna give it a try? The ballroom style that I teach? We can even start with the Waltz.”

“I don’t think I’ll be any good at it.”

“Don’t care. You owe it to me.” She raises her eyebrow in challenge and waits.

With a grimace, Killian rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck, shaking out his arms before slipping the flask from his pocket. “Rum?” He holds it out to her first, chuckling as she shakes her head and scoffs.

“Is that your solution to everything?”

“Doesn’t hurt,” he mutters, taking a sip for himself before setting it down by the top of the steps. At her incredulous look, Killian holds up his hand in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay, sometimes it’s more insult than injury. You win that one.”

She switches music, grabbing a small remote while she’s at the system before moving to the center of the room and motioning Killian towards her. When he moves to join her, she positions her arms and hands, only faltering for a moment as she moves his prosthetic into place before she uses the remote to start the song.

“Okay, hold that position. When I step back, you’re going to step forward. Got it?”

“Sure,” he says, his tone much more assertive than he feels at the moment. His eyes go downward, staring for the moment her foot moves back and he moves his forward. It’s been lifetimes ago, but he gets the general understanding of how he’s supposed to move. After three or four repetitions, she instructs him to look at her instead of their feet and he loses the progress he’s made. It’s partly due to inexperience, but it’s also because then he’s looking at her eyes, studying the pigments of color that he finds. He’s utterly enchanted by the flutter of her eyelashes, wondering if she feels the same jolt that he does.

He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts that he moves out of turn, and he’s a hair away from stepping on her toes. They both realize it, both sucking in a gasp at the close call and looking quickly at the lack of space between their feet. The spell of the moment is broken when their hold falls apart and they both start laughing.

“Not bad! Try again?”

She’s got to be lying; he feels like he was less than subpar at best but she’s still looking at him like he’s got something like potential and he’s not sure how to even begin processing that. But it’s time spent in the company of a pretty woman, so who is he to argue with her decision to invite him closer again?

They’re just moving to the same starting position when the door opens and closes swiftly, announcing someone’s arrival. Emma looks to the stairs to see who the newcomer is, her hand still tangled with his, her other one just coming to rest on his shoulder until she furrows her eyebrows.

“Mulan, what’s wrong?”

“We have a bit of a problem,” a female voice says, and Killian turns to see the hiking instructor Ruby was speaking to the night of the performances standing at the top of the stairs. She’s out of breath, and her face is pinched with worry and apprehension. “Ruby sprained her ankle. Victor is looking at it now, but he already says it isn’t looking too good.”

Emma’s hand on his shoulder tightens incrementally as the statement is uttered, and then she breaks the hold all together to run both her hands through her hair as one loud, angry expletive rings out through the dance studio.

-x-

She forgets for a moment that there’s a guest standing in the room with her, and that she’s standing with her arms around him to start with, no less. Instead, she drops an f-bomb or two, or five, and a bunch of other swears all in a row. What else could she do after finding out that her partner is okay but likely unable to dance any time soon?

“ _Shit_ ,” she mutters, stomping around the studio a couple times. She kicks a yoga mat in the corner for good measure. “What happened?”

“She came with me for the intermediate hike and lost her footing. She rolled it pretty bad. I had to carry her the whole way back and postpone the rest of the hike. Thankfully, we weren’t too far into the woods yet.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Everyone is showering her with attention so she’s doing fantastic,” the other woman says with a grin, and Emma’s own smile is thin-lipped but there. Of course, Ruby would be graciously accepting the fawning.

“I guess I can reschedule my next lesson, go over and check on her and…” It’s then that she remembers Killian is standing there, just behind her now, and she winces as she turns towards him. “Sorry, Killian. Um, raincheck on those lessons?”

“Of course, Swan. Until next time.”

She likes the way he says her name just a little too much, and it’s almost a relief when he’s gone. Apparently, even time in the supply closet hasn’t fully squashed the possibility for sexual attraction to a certain guest. He is at the top of her No list, though, so she will have a stern talk with herself later about remaining professional and aloof with him.

Things get worse when Emma stops by to see Ruby in the infirmary. Her ankle is swollen, the bruising already apparent when she lifts the ice bag for Emma to see. Ruby’s face is grim, as if she’s already received bad news, and maybe she has.

“How long?”

“Four weeks, maybe. Three if I’m lucky.”

With those simple sentences, Emma’s hopes of the job at Mills Regency vanish in smoke.

“Victor has ordered me to stay off of it for the next week, and we’ll start going through some stretches and rehab to get it healed up. I can still make it.”

“No, you can’t. I don’t want you to risk making it more permanent. I want you to heal properly the first time.” She settles onto the edge of Ruby’s bed, sighing as she does so.

They exhaust every possible other option, including Emma dancing on her own and her trying to teach another staff member the routine. The problem with that is she knows the strengths and weaknesses of each staff member, and also their work schedules. The best of the bunch are all tied up or getting ready to take their first week off of the season.

And then the terrible idea comes to her.

“Well, I _could_ teach someone.”

“Like who?”

She doesn’t respond, instead thinking about the way Killian looks visually next to her, and thinking about the way he quickly started getting the steps. He’ll probably resist, probably flat out reject the idea, but she has to at least _try_. “I gotta go. I’ll come back later. You _rest!_ ”

With that, Emma all but sprints from the infirmary, making her way across the campgrounds to the secluded section of cabins she visited just a week ago. She has no idea if he’ll even be back at his cabin now, but it’s worth a shot to try this place first. Bounding up the stairs of the modest cabin, Emma raps on the screen door.

Killian appears after a few seconds, his eyebrow going up in question when he sees her. “Hello, Swan. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You said you’d make it up to me, right?”

His look of confusion intensifies for a moment. “Make it up…? For the vomit incident? Of course.”

“And calling me by the wrong name, pushing your chair into me two days ago, stepping on the back of my heel at the grocery kiosk, _and_ knocking me on my ass while I was dancing earlier. All of that. You can make it up to me.”

His face had continued to pinch as she listed the offences he’d accrued in their short amount of shared time, so when she finishes, he nods slowly. “And how can I do that?”

“Be my dance partner.”

A pregnant pause follows her words, in which Killian blinks at her through the barrier of the screen door and Emma finally gains control of her breathing after the dash across camp.

“No.”

“ _Killian._ ”

“No, Swan, I’m not going to be any good for something that’s meant to be graceful.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I can barely walk a straight line,” he counters. And while he has a point, that’s not exactly a difficult thing to fix.

“So quit drinking so much.”

He steps back, mock affronted and clutching his chest.

“You don’t mess with a man’s rum, Swan.”

She just raises an eyebrow at him. “Okay, fine, give me a better reason.”

“How many professional dancers have artificial hands?”

“No one will even notice that!”

It’s Killian’s turn to lift an eyebrow, his head tilted for extra emphasis. They probably wouldn’t – not if he has the footwork she thinks he could have – but there’s no easy way to convince him of this fact.

“I just don’t think I’m what anyone would want to see dancing with someone like you.”

“I doubt that,” she answers quickly, the mental image of them together flashing strongly in her head.

“You’d be wrong. Listen, I am quite willing to do anything to make all of that up to you by any means necessary, except for that.”

“But this is the kind of repayment I need. I can teach you. I can teach you and you’ll be _good_.”

He still looks like he’s going to turn her down, but she’s turning just a tiny bit desperate.

“Okay, how about this. Tomorrow night, there’s this staff dance. You show up, you give dancing a try, and we go from there. I’ll buy the rum?”

The last sentence is a chance she’s willing to take, but it apparently does the trick. Hesitantly, oh so hesitantly, he nods his head. The fact that he’s grimacing while he does is a fact she’s willing to ignore.

“Good. Meet me outside the studio at ten and I’ll walk you up. Dress for a workout. It gets hot in the staff lodge.”

If possible, he grimaces harder. So she smiles as brightly as she can and lifts her hand in farewell as she heads back to the studio to prepare for her postponed lesson.

She’s nervous energy all through the next day, as well. She worries Killian isn’t even going to show, but all she can keep thinking about are the aesthetics they would create on stage if she could get him to move. Dark and brooding, with that constant three-day stubble. She gets lost in the thought of how it would feel to have a male partner again. Short of lessons and an occasional favor to Graham, it’s been a long time since she danced with a man.

Don’t get her wrong – she loves dancing with Ruby. They make one hell of a spectacle that people have loved for years. Plus, while they can’t compete, it’s fun to knock the gender barriers and fuck with the system a little bit. But mostly she and Ruby have been partners for all these years because of the trust they’ve created with each other. It’s worked well for them. They’ve participated in non-official events and arts festivals, and it gets them business.

For some reason, maybe due to the newness of the possibility, she shivers in anticipation.

Sure, she’ll have to give Regina a heads up so the hotelier knows she’ll be dancing with a sub for the evening, but that Ruby will be with her if they get the job. But since the email was addressed to the two of them, she figures that won’t be a problem.

When she can’t stand it anymore, when the clock is moving too slow, she changes for the third time and goes to stand by the studio. The building is dark and locked up, but she checks the door one last time to make sure and paces. At ten til the hour, she hears footsteps on the path and turns to see Killian wandering up. He’s in a t-shirt and shorts, and he looks apprehensive at best. She’s only mildly surprised to see him. More than surprised, she’s glad he actually showed.

Emma has dressed for the humidity that’s climbing upwards again, so even though the night brings a little relief from the discomfort, it’s still sticky.  Her hair is pulled up in multiple braids and crowned around her head to keep it off her neck, and otherwise she’s gone with light materials that only cover what’s absolutely necessary and appropriate. Her shorts, borrowed from Ruby’s clothes, may be just a tad too short. The way that Killian’s eyes trail up her legs with an appreciative glance kind of makes her feel like she made a good choice, though.

“You’re making a mistake,” he says as she motions him to follow her up the steps that lead to the staff lodge.

“I’ll be the judge of that. Let’s get a drink in us and see what happens.” She’s glad he can’t see her face after she says it because it sounds like a pick-up line.

“I brought my own,” Killian calls from behind her, and she can hear the quiet sloshing of his flask. There’s a quick flash of irritation, not that he brought the flask – it’s clear there’s an attachment to it that she’s not interested in breaking or making him change – but because she can’t have him getting too drunk too fast.

“Nurse that. Stay loose, not sloppy for me, okay? I’ll buy the last round.”

He nods, taking a quick sip and slipping the container back into his pocket.

Inside the lodge, the heat instantly intensifies, what with the lackluster air conditioning and the moving bodies. She gets to watch Killian’s face go from one of trepidation to some mixture of horror and wonder. There’s something to be said about the bass-driven music, the low lighting, the staff looking a little less prim and proper than they are when they’re directing hikes or leading a yoga session. A kid they call Herc who teaches archery normally looks like the perfect, nerdy frat boy during lessons, but with his shirt hanging open and the way his hand palms the ass of the girl in his arms, he looks like he’d fit better in a porno.

Now that she thinks of it, and now that she takes the time to imagine what Killian is seeing for the first time, she’s really surprised they _aren’t_ in some weird, group-sex, niche-as-fuck porno. She comes back to herself a little bit, grabs Killian’s hand, and makes her way through the sea of people. She’s not worried about him being in here. Everyone is so intent on not wanting others to notice what they’re doing that they don’t look – it’s the easiest rule of staff dances.

In need of her own lubrication for making someone else dance, she heads straight for the bar and orders tequila. After she orders, she realizes Killian is completely motionless beside her. At once, she’s not sure if it’s because she’s holding his prosthetic or if he’s still trying to take it all in.   
“You good?”

His eyes focus again, and he nods, taking a moment to sip from his flask again.

At the same time, a shot glass is finally placed down in front of her and she knocks back the drink. “Okay, let’s do this.” She weaves them through the dance floor, finding a place not central but still surrounded enough that he’ll get lost before he can escape if he tries to run. She has her priorities straight, after all.

He’s a good two feet away from her as the song that was playing ends and a new one begins. Like always, Emma takes her time to let the beat sink into her bones before she tries to get him to move. Instead, she follows what she’d do if she was dancing alone, closing her eyes and giving over to her heart instead of her head. Once she has the rhythm pumping through her blood, she grabs his t-shirt and pulls him closer, molding them together. She gasps, her eyes darting to meet his when she feels him insistently poking her where their hips are pressed together, and he at least has the dignity to look embarrassed by it.

“Sorry, love. You’re a little entrancing when you move like that,” he tells her a moment later, saying it close to her ear so he doesn’t have to yell over the music. He tries to put space between them, but she holds him in place. She waves it off, hoping that he can’t see her own feelings about it in the dim lighting.

Emma can’t help the flush that spreads along her cheek bones, but she is surprised when it keeps lighting a fire across the skin of her neck and beyond. She’s been called a thousand names, she’s been told she’s sexy and asked to do strip teases for men she was sleeping with, but for some reason Killian’s words are more arousing than she expected.

She can’t let him know how much she’s affected, of course, so with a coy smile, she instead turns back to their reason for being here. With her hands on his hips, she moves them as she moves her own body. And thank the higher powers; Killian is a man who knows how to move his hips. Most men that she teaches have a bad tendency to move their whole torsos when she tries to get them moving, but Killian mimics her action and his hips fluidly move the way Emma is directing them.

After getting him familiar with that one motion, she steps back a little and takes his hands. She prompts him to follow her footwork, slowly incorporating steps and hip movements at the same time until he’s moving exactly the way she wants him to. From there it’s simple; he moves easily as she guides him, catching on quickly when she coerces his movements with her own. He copies her or follows her nearly-unspoken directive, staring at his feet or hers, staring at her hips, his eyes dipping down to admire her legs more than once.

It only takes that first song but three songs later, Emma determines that this is possible. It’s even more apparent that he has the ability to move when the rum has worked its way into his bloodstream a little and he’s finally loosened up. The time is creeping by but she’s still a little too happy to wrap herself around him, so she doesn’t try to fight it.

After a couple more dances and a few trips to the bar, they engage in much lighter dancing, goofing off as they try to recreate famous dance choreography to songs that don’t match the beat. A few more after that, and they look just like everybody else in the building, fitted tightly together and letting the music rule their movements.

Another slow song comes on and without prompting, Killian gathers her close and easily sways to it. She’s not sure how much he’s had from his flask, but she’s also not sure how much tequila she’s had at this point. Which means they’re officially in dangerous territory, in her opinion. Probably way beyond it, but this is the first time in a half hour that she’s actually thought about it.

She hates that there’s obvious chemistry between them. Mostly, it’s because he’s a guest, and the one person in the room who is completely off limits. Also, she’s always been a hit-it-and-quit-it woman. Relationships are messy. They hurt. They’re prone to being overbearing and uncomfortable. At least, all of hers have been. Not to say that Killian would be like that. Her fingers tickle into the hair on the back of his neck and she can feel more than hear the contented sigh that escapes him.

He’s actually quite smart, and very funny, and easy on the eyes. He’d make a hell of a one-nighter if she was allowed. That much is obvious by the latent abilities she’s yet to fully unlock, and many of which she’s not allowed to. He’d make a top grade lover, with the way he holds her, his hand splayed across her lower back, his prosthetic propped against her hip – her hand is still in his hair and she’s one shift away from being lip-to-lip with him, a fact that finally shakes her from her little daydream.

She steps back, enjoying the dazed look on his face for a moment before she twirls under his arm and pulls him away from the floor. Thankfully, the rum seems to have worked enough that he looks oblivious to her inner turmoil and attraction.

As soon as they’re outside, Emma deems their experiment a success. “You can dance like that? You can follow my directions? You can dance the Mambo.” She’s yelling, but there’s no one around to hear her lack of volume control except for Killian, who is having similar troubles.

“I still think you’re wrong,” he loudly concludes, swinging their hands as they diligently pick their way down the path to where they met up earlier.

“I could be, but I don’t think I am. Come by tomorrow at noon. That’s my lunch break. Give it an actual, sober try and decide after that, okay?”

He stares at her, his eyes searching her whole face and making eye contact every few swipes, until he finally releases a breath she didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Fine. Okay. I’ll be there. But if I’m terrible at it, we’re done, and I’ll find another way to repay you. Deal?”

“Deal!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's been leaving comments and giving kudos. I want to sit down and respond, but this chapter will answer a lot of the comments on its own, and I hope make up for Killian's drunkenness in the previous chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dance lessons begin, and with a malfunctioning air conditioner to add, the heat is bound to rise. A chapter of ups and downs and learning.

Of course, Killian’s not terrible at dancing. Not by a long shot. They spend the first day on basic steps, with Killian staring intently between the mirror and Emma as they work on form and movements. He’s even better with his hips than she initially realized, which makes her job a little easier.

The biggest struggle is working on something much simpler than form or footwork. Killian is terrible at eye contact. And the longer he avoids actually looking at her, the harder it gets to teach him the easy stuff. It doesn’t help that the air conditioning chooses this hour to fuck off, and Emma spends a minute stretching, going one more time to fiddle with the knobs in hopes of getting some cool air into the room, and then she switches the music.

Killian, still in front of the mirrors, doesn’t even look over. His expression is one of determination and irritation, and she’s curious as to why those two are mixing together. But first, she needs to get her partner to trust her. She watches him stare down his reflection, his feet moving repeatedly in the simple pattern she taught him to start, a furrow of concentration wrinkling his forehead.

“Hey, come over here for a minute.” She waves him over as she spreads a couple yoga mats on the floor right under where the fans circulate so they have a nice breeze. She grabs a second water bottle and hands it to him, smiling as he drinks it as if he was stranded without for days, taking a singular moment to appreciate the way the sweat drips down his temples. Then she’s back to business, sitting down on one of the mats and looking at him expectantly until he folds his legs and sits down across from her.

“Hold out your hands,” she instructs, waiting until his hand and prosthetic are stretched in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees. She turns his hands palm up, placing her hands in his immediately after. He flinches, immediately trying to pull away from the touch, and Emma lets him.

“What is this?”

“A trust exercise. When you’re ready, put your hands out again, and make eye contact with me.”

She watches him, never wavering, keeping herself calm even as she feels the way her ponytail is sticking to her neck and a drop of sweat is traveling down her lower back. She knows that if she flinches, the whole thing will fall apart.

He exhales heavily, grabbing the towel she placed next to the mat for him and swiping it across his face. He takes another drink from his water before he shrugs his shoulders and settles back into the same position he started in. After a couple seconds he slowly, ever so slowly, holds out his hands again. Emma gently places her hands in his again, still steadily staring at him and waiting. After a few more deep breaths, Killian finally looks up and meets her eyes.

Three, four, five, six… She holds his gaze for ten seconds and then nods to let him know that it’s okay to break the contact. He looks down, but doesn’t move from her hold.

“Tell me more about this job,” he prompts.

“So there’s this old contact I have. She fits the Type A personality descriptions too well, but she’s opening her own hotel. She wants to make it like old, upscale hotels used to be, with live entertainment in a lounge setting. The day I went into town to do my laundry after we uh, first met, there was the email basically inviting us to audition.”

As she talks, Killian looks up and holds eye contact with her. “Why do you need me to dance with you?”

“With Ruby out for a month, that would leave maybe a couple days for her to get ready to dance. While she knows what she’s doing, she’s going to have to work her way back up to speed. I don’t want her dancing that soon after being cleared for putting full weight on it, just for the sake of a job possibility.” She waits a beat, figures she can push it and get him talking a little bit, and then asks a question of her own. “You can choose not to answer this, but why the rum?”

“I’ll spare the details, but I will say the loss of my hand and my heart left me a little empty. Drinking has been a way to fill it and waste away the days.”

His heart. The loss of someone close. And she doubts it’s as tame as her shitty breakups. She doesn’t ask him to clarify; besides, she doesn’t have time to when he asks his next question.

“You got rather defensive when I said I wouldn’t dare dance. Why that response?”

With a whoosh, Emma blows a lock of hair out of her eyes. Before she can answer, Killian squints his eyes and looks at her closely.

“An ex-lover, correct?”

“Two. Two ex-boyfriends. One is the big regret of my life and the other was just an ass.”

He nods, following her lead and not asking for further explanation. “Tell me something else,” Killian says, clearing his throat. He’s managed to keep his eyes locked with hers the full time and she doesn’t want to break the streak they have going. “Anything. Tell me anything.”

She doesn’t know where the words come from but all of a sudden it’s coming out in the open. “I was raised in the foster system until David’s mother took me in. Uh, David Nolan. One of the owners of this place. Ruth adopted me and I finally had a family in her and David, and then after he got married I had a sister. And I’ve had Ruby by my side all this time, too.”

She shrugs and smiles, fighting with herself to keep looking straight at him when she suddenly has the urge to look away. Open up about exes? Sure. Open up about her family? No, thanks.

“A lost boy always recognizes a lost girl,” Killian says quietly. “My mum died when I was young, my father left not long after, and it’s been me and Liam as long as I can remember.”

“Why do you hate the camp so much?” Emma’s not sure why she’s even asking, but for some reason she feels the need to know.

Sadly, Killian finally breaks the eye contact that they’ve been holding but it’s to chuckle. He shifts his arms, but doesn’t let go of her hands. His fingers squeeze her hand and he sighs restlessly as he looks back to her. “I’ve not been in a good place for a long time, obviously,” he says plainly. “Liam tricked me. Told me we’d be going home for the summer, but instead dragged me all the way to bloody Maine.”

“That’s the funny thing about Storybrooke and Camp Hope, they’re the home you didn’t know you needed,” Emma tells him, not realizing how true the words are until her heart constricts. “That’s the other reason I want this job so bad. It’s down in Portland, and the trip is half as long. I want to move closer to home.”

They’re both quiet for a long time, and Emma smiles not just because she wants to keep Killian at ease but because he’s already doing so much better at looking at her. From the hunched, grumpy man she pre-met at the grocery kiosk to this moment right here, there’s already a marked difference.

“Well, then you better teach me how to look like a professional so I can help you get that job.” His smile after this statement is genuine and brilliant, and Emma can’t help her own from mimicking his.

Without further ado, she clambers up to her feet and holds out her hand to help him up. After he’s standing again, she shakes his hand in agreement that it’s time they get to work.

“I’ll be here after dinner,” she says, noting that she has a lesson starting in just twenty minutes and she needs to get food in her stomach before that time. “We can at least get some extra footwork in if you can spare the time.”

“I look forward to it, Swan.”

As the next week wears on, the lessons with Killian get better and worse. By all standards, it’s not the worst experience Emma’s ever had teaching, but yet…

“No,” she says for at least the fifth time in a row. “No, no, no. You move on the _two_ , not the one. Try it again.”

Despite looking frustrated as hell, Killian resumes his hold, sucks in a deep breath, and exhales as they wait for the song to start. She catches a glimpse of them in the mirrors from her periphery. Her ideal aesthetics that she imagined before asking him to dance with her are purely figments of her imagination at present. They’re both sweaty right now; his cheeks are pink from the exertion, her hair is falling out of the shitty bun she put it in earlier to get it off her neck, and they could both give a kid nicknamed “Pit-stains” a run for his or her money right now.

It wouldn’t be nearly so bad if the humidity hadn’t rolled in full-force the day before, blanketing the whole camp in a heavy haze of summer warmth. The meager air conditioning in the studio is struggling to keep them cool, but with how long they’ve been at this today, even the ancient unit is no match for their activity levels.

They start again, and though Emma _just_ told him not to move on the one, he still flinches, his foot raising up, and she can feel the movement without looking down to see it. She glares at him in the split second it takes for the second beat to occur because now he’s thrown off – now they have to start over. _Again_.

She doesn’t even move from the hold, just angrily jams the button on the remote that will start the song at the top again. While the stereo system takes its sweet time to configure, Emma tries her best not to glower at him the whole time. “Do I need to start counting out loud again?”

His reply is something along the lines of “No, mistress,” but the song starts again and she holds firm as the count begins. He does his best to hide his smile in a look of pure innocence, and suddenly, she has to fight her own smile. Despite her grumbling and bickering, he’s still been injecting the whole lesson with quiet humor and thus, keeping her from tensing up too much. This time, he moves on the two.

The next day, they almost manage to get through the new section of the routine in one go. He messes up a bunch, but they don’t stop, and Emma counts that as progress in her book. With the performance just three weeks away, she needs more runs like this, and faster.

Maybe that’s why she snaps when he starts fidgeting around, but mostly it’s because of the heat and the looming deadline, and the worry that someone is going to notice that whenever there are gaps in her dance lessons and class sessions, she’s pretty much not leaving the studio. If David or Snow have noticed her skipping breakfasts and lunches, only relying on whatever Killian grabs from the dining hall, they haven’t said anything yet. Maybe they just assume it’s because she’s picking up Ruby’s lessons, now. Whatever the case, she needs them to stay oblivious for a little while longer.

She turns around from taking a deep gulp of water from her bottle to see Killian with a storm cloud above his head, his expression lost and faraway. He may be keeping practices light, but she still catches these moments of his, and while she assumes what it must be about this time, she still asks.

“What’s wrong?”

They’ve gotten extremely good at communicating since Emma’s little trust experiment, so Killian doesn’t really hesitate before he speaks. “They’ll all be staring at my hand, or lack thereof,” he says, his eyebrows furrowing and his lips drawing down into a frown. He’s fixating on the fake flesh of his left hand, having switched over to this attachment after the first couple sessions instead of his hook. She doesn’t care which he uses, as long as it’s going to be where it needs to be while they’re dancing.

“No, they won’t,” she tries to reassure him. She sets her water back down and wanders closer, trying to get him to center in the moment rather than whatever dark place he’s gone off to. He barely even glances at her this time. While they’ve shared a lot in their time together already, there’s still so much buried beneath his surface – there are demons waiting at every turn, much like she deals with when she’s all alone at night.

“They will.”

“They won’t. They’ll be so focused on your movements they won’t even realize one of your hands isn’t real. You hear me?”

In fact, Emma constantly forgets that he _doesn’t_ have two hands, not because she’s insensitive to his lack of hand, but because they’ve managed to edit any movements that would make him uncomfortable with it. She forgets because it’s part of him, and she accepts him exactly as he is. She just doesn’t understand why _he_ can’t see that. She moves to stand in front of him, her hand reaching out to touch the prosthetic in a move of solidarity.

“Yeah,” he responds, not even bothering to try and look at her this time.

“ _Hey,”_ she stresses, stepping into that personal space they’ve worked so hard to establish between them. She makes sure she’s got his full attention now, his eyes locked with hers, her hands gripping the open sides of the button down she can’t believe he’s wearing in this heat. “You hear me?” she repeats, her tone leaving no room for argument.

His eyes are wider than she’s ever seen them, and his breath smells like the coffee he chugged down a minute ago. It whooshes out of him and brushes against her with the closeness of their proximity. “I hear you,” he says softly, his tongue darting out to wet his lips.

The warning bells are all going off like crazy, but for once she doesn’t listen to a single one of them. Instead, using the leverage she has on his shirt, she pulls him forward the rest of the way and kisses him. And _oh_ , what a kiss it is. Where he’s still this side of timid on the dance floor, there’s no hesitation in the way his lips move against hers. Even less when he’s the one to initiate some tongue into the action, just requesting entrance before mapping out the roof of her mouth. She feels his hand come up to tangle in her hair and she’s hyper-aware of the way she’s on the tips of her toes, damning herself for not being in heels at this moment. Her muscles scream their protest but all she can concentrate on is sucking in a deep breath before diving back in for more.

She’s kissed before, and she’s _been_ kissed before, but this is the kind of kiss that songs are written about. This is the kind of kiss that would come with the swelling of instrumentals and a panning shot of the sunset or rainbow in the background of the sappy rom-com she and Ruby like to watch in their downtime.

Hours may have passed since this first began and she wouldn’t even know it, but when she does stop, the reality of the situation slams back into her. He still looks a little dazed, like he’s floating on a cloud, and when he starts to speak he only gets out, “That was…” before she cuts him off.

“A one-time thing,” she says, forcing herself to release her grip on his shirt and step back. Lost in the after-effects, she can only turn in her own haze of emotions. “Don’t follow me. Wait five minutes and then take the rest of the day until after dinner.”  
“As you wish,” he says, his voice strained and longing in those three little words. She bends and picks up her shoes and water bottle on her way out and doesn’t look back. It’s only once she hits the door that she realizes she tasted nothing _but_ the coffee, and wonders when he stopped sipping rum before their sessions.

-x-

Killian’s had some bad ideas in his life. One was not tucking and rolling out of the car when Liam told him where they were going. The second was listening to Emma when she said he could do this. Judging by the way her face is pinched for the third day in a row, he’s pretty sure she was overzealous. They haven’t been able to move onto a new section of the routine since that kiss, but the day is still young and he’s come to the dance studio with a new brand of determination.

And by “determination” he means that he’s had way too much coffee and he’s been practicing in his cabin all night.

As they warm up, he stays focused on the task at hand. From the corner of his eye, however, he can see Emma looking at him. They’ve never talked about the kiss, preferring instead to both pretend it never happened so that nothing has to be more complicated than it already is.  

By the time they’ve made it through all of the routine that he’s learned so far, he feels like things are finally on the right track. He doesn’t shy away from the steps or the eye contact today. He pays attention to every little cue Emma gives him. He definitely does _not_ think about how she felt when she clung to him during the best make out session he’s ever had in his life.

He can’t speak for her, but Killian is much more aware of everything that she’s been trying to teach him. He’s more attuned to her body’s movements, and without realizing it, on the third run-through, he follows the muscle memory that she’s been instilling in him this whole time. After just a half hour of working, Emma smiles at him – a genuine smile that he hasn’t seen for days now – and claps her hands. This expression on her face is worth the fact that the entire front of his t-shirt is soaked through.

“Okay! On to the next part.”

Hiding his activities from Liam has been both the easiest thing in the world and the hardest. It’s simple because Liam is so lost in his own adventures that he doesn’t notice Killian isn’t drinking himself into oblivion anymore. It’s difficult, though, because while Liam hasn’t noticed he’s not three sheets to the wind every day, he’s definitely picked up on the fact that Killian isn’t at the cabin for much of the day.

Most days that he leaves, he wanders out in the clothes he’d be wearing if he were going for a walk or down to the main lodge. As it is, he shows up at the studio having to damn near strip some days as he enters the space with the malfunctioning air conditioning.

Today, the whole spacious room is cool and breezy, and Emma quips that they’ve finally gotten a maintenance man to look at the AC. “It won’t make it to next summer, but it’ll do for the rest of this one,” she remarks as they set up for a new section of the dance.

They get lost in their practicing, until Emma’s phone beeps an alert from near the stereo. “Okay. Let’s run the whole thing, best you can, and then I have to clean up and get the studio ready for a yoga class.”

This has been the system for the last two weeks since they began this process. They practice in snatches between Emma’s schedule and the studio’s, having to scurry away and clear out before someone else needs the space.

He follows her lead, figuratively speaking. She doesn’t invite him to her cabin to keep practicing, doesn’t offer to come back to his. And so they stick to whatever time they can use the dance studio and then go their opposite ways for whatever length of time they don’t have that space available.

After they make it through the choreography to Emma’s satisfaction, she lets the music play a little longer as she continues her steps. When it comes to something he obviously would’ve been part of during the dance, she finally tapers off, her shoulders sagging as she finally relaxes.

“Good. Getting better. By next week we should have the whole thing together and it’s just a matter of making sure you look perfect and professional up there.” She makes a noise of surprise, and while Killian doesn’t see anything amiss, there’s obviously something that has just gone off in her mind at her own words and he wonders, but she doesn’t share.

“What time later?” Killian asks, retrieving his t-shirt from the floor where he stripped it off earlier. It had taken a great deal of self-pep talks for him to take it off at all, but even with the air bringing relief, this is the most physical activity outside of a bedroom that he’s had in ages. If his watch is to be trusted, he’s also burning enough calories to allow him to eat for hours on end without making a dent in the progress. He’s noticed, also, that some of his clothes are fitting looser than they were when he got here. It’s all exhausting, though.

“Six. I have two more lessons today but I also have to run into town and get some things done,” she says, grabbing a dry mop from the storage closet next to the stairs. He holds out his hand for it, knowing she still has other tasks to complete in order to leave the studio clean for the next instructor. She hands it over gratefully, going to stash her gear and clean up their discarded towels and water bottles while Killian pushes the dry mop over the polished floors.

“I should have shoes for you before next week so you can start to adjust to those,” she says as if going down some mental checklist of things as she works. She takes a cloth and cleaner to the mirrors, finding all the spots they would’ve made by accidentally (or not so accidentally) leaning against the reflective wall over the last hour.

While Killian usually has no difficulty pushing down his attraction for Emma, as soon as he sees her facing that wall, seeing the way her image is reflected back with her sweaty hair and her pink cheeks, he works on finishing his task faster in order to escape. All he can think is how pretty she’d look, flushed for a whole different reason, with him behind her in that mirror, and he has _no room_ for those kinds of filthy thoughts right now. Not when he’s determined to hold up his end of the bargain and work as hard as possible to make Emma look good and get that job.

“All done,” he says shortly after, stashing the mop and pulling deeply from his bottled water before throwing the empty container in the recycle bin by the floor. “Need anything else?”

She looks at him, not turning from the mirror, her eyes meeting his in her ditto image with a familiar flash of heat in them. “No,” she says at length. Finally turning away from her cleaning and moving to put away the solution. She gathers the towels and rag and turns to him with a distracted smile. “No, that’s it for now. See you later.”

He waves on his way down the stairs, and he’s just opened the door when he nearly runs head first into someone else.

“Killian?”

“What are you doing here?” Killian asks, trying to hide his nervous surprise at seeing Liam at the studio.

“I could ask the same, little brother. Taken an interest in dancing?”

“Thought a lesson or two might be fun,” he says, managing the lie easily enough. He’s positively matted down with sweat, but either Liam doesn’t notice or he thinks Killian really is that badly out of shape.

“Good on you,” he says, a smile lighting up his whole face.

“Killian, I forgot to ask… Oh. Hi.”

It’s difficult to not lock up at the sound of Emma’s voice yelling out behind him, especially when she was clearly not expecting him to be so close with another pair of ears in attendance.

“What did you forget to ask?” It’s Liam that asks for the clarification, since Killian’s throat seems to have closed up entirely in the shock of the moment.

“Ah, just if he still wanted to learn the Waltz, too.” While her voice stutters just a bit, Emma is clearly better at getting through this situation than Killian is. “I’m Emma, one of the – well, the _only_ dance instructor right now. You must be Liam.”

She reaches past Killian to hold out her hand, her body heat nearly pressed against his back when she moves to get closer. Her hand rests on his lower back to hold her steady as she leans forward, and Killian wonders if Emma’s heartbeat has sped up at the contact like his has. Liam shakes her hand, an almost wary look entering his eyes as he does. It probably doesn’t help that Emma looks just as sweaty and disheveled as Killian does, and his eyes widen at the picture they must make and what assumptions Liam is probably jumping to right now.

“That I am. Nice to meet you, lass. My brother’s being a gentleman, isn’t he?” That tone, of _course_ Liam thinks he’s shagging Emma.

“This one? Meek as a mouse sometimes,” Emma says with a hint of a laugh in her voice. He wants to remind her of the night at the staff lodge and that kiss she started and see if either of _those_ moments were “meek” but he has to settle himself with an aggravated noise and a forced smile. Her hand twitches where it still rests on his back.

“Wonderful. Well, if that’s all, I’d like to escape this bloody humidity,” Killian says, turning to give her a look that says everything he can’t right now. With the grin she gives back to him, he’s pretty sure she knows. “Until next time, Swan.”

He starts to wander in the direction of his cabin, but before he walks two steps, the small blonde that runs the yoga sessions is bounding up the path and exuberantly greeting Liam. The words die in her throat when she sees Emma at the entrance of the studio and Killian just in front of them all.

“Oh, _hi_. Am I early? I know you said you’d be here at ten til, but I’m not double booked, am I?” She’s breathless and smiling, even if she looks puzzled beyond reason.

“No,” Emma says quickly. “I slipped an extra lesson in during my lunch break. We were just heading out. Studio is all yours.” He looks at her while she says it, really looks, and so that’s the only reason he sees the expression that crosses over her features. It’s something like suspicion, with her own hint of guilt. He wonders what’s just gone through her mind, but he decides he’ll ask later when he comes back.

With a vague wave, she’s moving around the back of the studio and off towards wherever her cabin is located behind. He watches her go until Liam clears his throat, but before he can say whatever he clearly wants to say, they’re interrupted again. More voices on the path announces the arrival of the rest of the class, and he notices again the bashful look on Liam’s face and the light flush to Tink’s cheeks.

As the younger of them, Killian wants to beat Liam at giving him the Look, the one passed down through generations of Jones men that means there’s clearly need for them to talk in private, but he’s met with the same expression on Liam’s face.

“I’ll see you for a late lunch in an hour?” Killian inquires as he starts moving down the path.

“I’ll see you then,” Liam affirms, turning to follow Tink into the studio with the rest of the class walking in behind them.

While he wants to poke around and find Emma, he also knows his boundaries. He also needs a shower, and fresh clothes. With that thought, he pulls out his phone and finds Henry in his contacts, already working on figuring out how to handle laundry as he makes his way back to his side of the camp.

“Yes sir, Mr. Jones?”

“Henry, it’s Killian,” he says, extraneously, as the lad will never loosen up on the title. “I was wondering if you could tell me where to take my laundry so I can have some fresh clothes. I seem to have gone through my supply of certain items and Liam is the one that’s been handling all of that.”

“Of course, Mr. Jones. I’ll meet you at your cabin with my cart and I’ll take you over to our laundromat. All free of course, for guest use.”

“Excellent. Just give me twenty minutes and I’ll be ready for you,” he says, picking up his pace and _actually_ jogging across the campgrounds towards his cabin.

He showers as fast as he possibly can, grabbing whole armloads of all the clothes he’s soaked through and shoving it in the laundry bag he finds at the back of his closet. He’s just barely ready when Henry knocks on the door, and he greets the young man more enthusiastically than he did the first time he met him. That Killian feels like someone he forgot about, quite frankly.

He’s thankful for the ride to and from the laundromat, and Killian assures Henry that he’ll be fine on his own to go switch and retrieve it later on. He makes sure to press a ten dollar bill into Henry’s hand, giving the young man another genuine smile as he checks the time. Liam is due back at any minute, and he knows that whatever they talk about will shift how the rest of this vacation goes for them.

Having slacked on the grocery kiosk order for a week, Killian hobbles together a quick lunch consisting of nothing more than peanut butter sandwiches, thankful for the very last of the bread and jam. He’s refilling his own water glass and setting another for Liam when the screen door opens and his brother walks in.

“So tell me about your sudden interest in dance. Or should I say a sudden interest in dance instructors?”

“If you’re insinuating what I think you are…”

“You know I am. You know they can kick us out if you’re sleeping with the bloody instructor, right?”

“Aye, which is why I would never think to jeopardize our time here by doing so,” Killian says. He’s surprised by this sudden turn in the conversation, but he’s not sure why. He should’ve known Liam would automatically assume he’s doing his best to muck up a good thing. He’s becoming more and more aware of the fact that Emma is _that_ off limits to him, so he doesn’t need the reminder that he’s falling for her shoved back in his face.

It takes a moment, but he realizes they’re both standing behind their chairs, glaring daggers and breathing heavily as if setting up for a brawl.

“I’m not fucking her,” Killian says, making sure to speak the words calmly.

Liam stares at him for a solid ten seconds before his shoulders relax. “I believe you. Can you tell me why you’re suddenly so keen on lessons?”

“No. Because it probably _is_ against the rules, but it’s nothing to do with romantic entanglements. I promised Emma I would help her with a predicament, and that’s why I’m spending so much time with her.”

Liam looks at him for another long moment before dropping his chin to his chest and exhaling loudly. “Fine, fine. You keep your secrets. Just as long as you’re not breaking any laws, I can’t really complain about the fact that you look like you’ve lost nearly a stone since we arrived.”

Killian makes a loud noise at that. “It’s not been that much, you arse.”

Instead of answering, Liam finally seats himself at the table and motions for Killian to sit, as well. The rest of lunch is passed by Liam talking about what he’s found to be his favorite activities, including the yoga sessions that Tink runs in the afternoons.

“Before you jump to your own conclusions, she’s easy to talk to. I’d agreed to help set up the studio with her today which is why I was there early. Had I known the studio was already occupied, and by you no less, I would’ve barged in to say hello.”

“Well, don’t start skulking about hoping to catch us up to anything, unless you want to see some terribly dreadful rhythm.”

“I doubt that, brother. You were always good with learning new things, and you were born with mum’s rhythm in your blood.”

The words help, somehow, knowing that even though Liam doesn’t fully know what he’s up to, he still believes in him.

“Perhaps we should start up lunches together after your yoga sessions,” Killian offers when their sandwiches are gone and they work together to clean up their mostly-tidy kitchenette.

And while the afternoon didn’t start exactly how he imagined it would, when Liam agrees that would be a great idea for them to start connecting again in their own way, it turns out better than he could’ve hoped. Liam even joins him to take his own clothes that need laundered and they spend the rest of the afternoon before he’s set to meet Emma again talking of everything and nothing. Despite having been together all this time, it’s as if the brothers had spent years apart, and Killian wonders how long it’s been since they truly talked like this.

_Too long_ , Killian decides as he dresses in clean shorts and a t-shirt, sliding into socks and shoes before he bids farewell to his brother on his way out the door. Far too long, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued love to all leaving comments and/or giving kudos. Your feedback means the world to me as I post this up. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Next one is up on Thursday!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone discovers the secret that Emma and Killian are hiding, and Killian experiences a loss he never expected to have.

Emma doesn’t waste time when she gets back to her cabin, stripping and going directly to her shower, turning the knobs to cold, and stepping underneath as soon as she can. It’s a mistake, even though it feels like heaven, because the sound she makes when her breath hitches, the way the air backs up right into her lungs again, makes her think of the way Killian had looked at her while she was cleaning the mirror. His eyes had darkened in a way she can only think was arousal, and he had sighed something like want and regret at the same time and she imagines she pictured the same possibilities he did at that exact moment.

After only a brief second, she adjusts the temperature until it’s tepid. She diligently showers off the sweat and exertion, only staying in long enough to wash herself so her mind doesn’t stray to things less innocent and definitely not clean.

Slicking back her hair, she wrings out the extra water before wrapping it in a towel, drying herself with another one before slipping on her robe. Thankfully, her cabin’s AC is just fine and she’s surprised she hasn’t done something dumb like suggesting they practice in her cabin, in her bed… horizontally.

With another noise of irritation at herself, she storms out of the bathroom, and is immediately proud of herself for not screaming when Ruby greets her from the same bed she was just imagining defiling.

“What are you doing here?”

“Came to see my dance buddy. I was finally cleared for moving as long as I don’t overdo it,” Ruby responds brightly, pointing at the air cast around her ankle. “Now, what the hell are you up to?” It’s not just an inquiry; there’s accusation in the words, like she knows what Emma was thinking before she walked back into the room.

“What do you mean?” Emma’s voice is all nonchalant innocence, and she ducks into her closet to change into shorts and a tank top since her idea of lounging around in her robe is now out of the question. “I’m teaching – twice as many lessons and classes, I’d like to add – and trying to get ready for this performance.” She pokes her head out to give her friend a pointed look at this.

Ruby hums in response, shifting to lean back on Emma’s bed. “And how’s that going? You came to see me once right after I hurt my ankle to ask which dance was better and you’ve been shut up in the studio ever since.”

“I’m not a shut in,” she says, disappearing back into her closet.

“You haven’t gone to staff dances for the last two weekends.”

“So? I haven’t been in the mood.”

“Which is totally like you, and I would buy it, if it weren’t for Mulan saying the studio was lit up like the Fourth of July last Friday night with music. What are you hiding, Emma Swan?”

She takes her time coming back out, waffling between telling the truth and trying to lie through her teeth. This way, Ruby doesn’t see the war going across Emma’s face while she wrings her hands. Taking one last deep breath, she walks out and tries her best to not fidget as she starts to explain.

“Okay, so I _did_ find a partner for the Mills Regency trial run thing.”

“Really? But that’s great news! Why wouldn’t that be…” She trails off, her head cocking to one side as she considers Emma again. “Who is it?”

“It’s a man named Killian.”

“And where did you meet Killian? Because I know for sure he’s not in any of our shared social circles.” When Emma still refuses to spit out the fact that he’s a guest at the camp, Ruby finally must surmise it on her own. “Emma Middle Name Swan!” Emma snorts, because she doesn’t have a middle name so this is how Ruby has always taken to yelling at her, but then she remembers that Ruby is _yelling_ at her and she cringes as her friend continues. “ _Tell me_ he’s not a guest. Please, I am begging you, tell me this partner is not paying to be here.”

Emma groans by way of answer, dropping onto the bed dramatically, face down, continuing to groan as she does. “That’s not the worst of it,” she says, though it’s muffled by the mattress and blankets beneath her. She’s already gone this far; she might as well tell Ruby everything at this point. With a deep breath in as soon as she lifts her head, she continues. “I kissed him.”

Ruby’s screeching answer is totally deserved, and Emma listens to approximately thirty seconds of her friend berating her before she shifts again to sit up on the bed. “Okay, okay. I deserve all of that. But Red, wait ‘til you see him. You’ll understand everything after that, I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh, _now_ I’m gonna see him? _After_ you’ve made bad decisions?”

“You have to. I’ve just decided that you need to sit in on our practices and help me coach him. It’s not like you’re doing anything else.”

“I’ve taken up pottery, thank you very much. But I’ll agree that you need a chaperone to be alone with this man if you’re going to jeopardize everything with dumb actions like _kissing him_.” Ruby emphasizes the last two words by smacking Emma’s arm with each syllable. “So you’re going with Mambo?”

“We’re going with Mambo,” Emma responds. With a noise, she pulls out her phone and opens her pictures. Internet and cell connections out at camp are spotty at best, but she made sure to save a bunch of pictures of her ideas for what Killian should wear for the performance. “You need to help me get some costumes for him.”

Ruby makes grabby hands at Emma’s phone, flicking through the choices with glee. “Do you have shoes for him yet?”

“I had Graham overnight a pair after we first started. He’s been breaking them in for about two days now.”

“When is the next time you’re practicing?”

“Tonight. He’s coming back after dinner and we’re gonna run through what he’s learned. You up for a visit later?”

The smile Ruby gives is one Emma knows well, full of power and teeth, and that special Ruby glint in her eyes. “I can’t wait.”

If Killian is bothered by Ruby being in the studio with them, he doesn’t show it. In fact, Emma might even say he looks a little calmer. Maybe the fact that they’re not alone is a good thing for his mind, too. Whatever the case, the two of them start working on getting Killian into better shape. With her friend’s directions, Killian is improving faster, which is also beneficial since they don’t have to run the same steps over and over again.

Ruby’s not always able to come to the practices, but she tries to be there as much as possible. When she starts some light physical therapy on her ankle to strengthen it, she mostly schedules her appointments for right before or after Emma’s lessons with Killian so she can stop on her way to and from the small medical building.

Killian adjusts quickly to the two of them instructing him. Ruby calls out tips and reminders as they move through the different sections of the routine, which builds his muscle memory stronger than it was developing before.

She stops them at one point, readjusting in her chair next to the stereo to fix them both with her gaze. “Okay, it’s good. But it needs to be better. Regina will expect this to set the room on fire. I want the audience to look at either one of you and be jealous of the other. So, while I know Emma is fine with turning up the heat, let’s focus on you, Killian.”

His eyebrows climb up his forehead at Ruby’s words and Emma has to stop herself from chuckling. She remembers this method, and Ruby is probably enjoying herself way too much. But she also wants to see how Killian handles this.

“What do you mean, lass?”

“To really sell a dance, I need to want to be up there dancing with you. So make me want you. Make me jealous that it’s Emma there in your arms instead of me. Sell it.” She emphasizes the last two words, turning them from a simple direction to a challenge, and Killian is the kind of guy that enjoys a challenge, if Emma were to guess.

His whole visage is blank, but he seems to be considering the words and how to go about following directions. When the music starts again, Killian’s hold _feels_ different. It feels… incredible, and somewhere between tender and possessive. It’s somewhere in the second section of steps that Emma sees that uptick of his lips, the flirty little smile that sends a pang into her stomach and beyond that makes her want to stop the dance altogether and kiss him until she’s breathless.

She’s unable to stop the soft noise escaping her lips when they finish, their foreheads pressed tightly together and his lips so close it would take barely a movement to touch. Killian’s eyes widen a bit, his own breath sucking into his lungs as his hand tightens on her waist.

They’re both pulled from the moment by Ruby clapping her hands and a sound of glee calling to them. “Excellent! Yes! _That_ is the kind of spirit you want to take with you.”

When her eyes meet Ruby’s again, there’s a knowing glint in them – the look says everything she’s feeling isn’t as hidden as she hoped it would be. She’s going to kill her roommate, of that she is certain. With an indulgent sigh, she walks over to Ruby and snatches the remote out of her hand. Instead of the comment Emma is expecting, though, Ruby tugs her close.

“You were right about all this. He’s damn good.”

Emma smiles then, a quiet “I know” her only response before she reaches for her towel and blots along her neck. “One more time,” she says to the room at large, catching the barest hint of a smug expression on Killian’s face that lets her know he heard the compliment. Good. Maybe he’s finally letting go of the insecurity they’ve been working to eradicate this whole time, then.

As far as the practices where they’re alone, the time is much better utilized and it’s all business. Because of that, she’s spending less time with him, even if the way he holds her is starting to feel more intimate than a lover’s tocuh, more so than the way they kissed each other, and so it’s definitely a case of one step forward, two steps back… pun not intended.

Whatever the case, Killian is the very image of professional when they’re together. He does his best to keep eye contact (which he’s passed with flying colors since their first trust exercise) and not look at his feet. It’s all vast improvement, but they’re still not quite to the level of quality that Emma wants to present at the Mills Regency.

The date of the performance is starting to loom in the near-distant future, and Emma realizes, quite startlingly, that she’s more nervous about this performance than she thought she would be.

A week before their performance date, she gets a text from Granny that a large parcel is waiting for her at the diner, and Emma immediately leaves to go pick it up. She knows the studio is empty the rest of the afternoon due to Tink moving her yoga class to the main lawn thanks to a break in the weather, so Emma takes time to hang all the costumes that Graham sent to her. Killian can run the whole number with minimal problems now, so she doesn’t mind taking an afternoon to play dress-up instead. It’ll certainly be an interesting change from their normal schedule.

-x-

When Killian shows up, Emma is all alone. This isn’t uncommon, as her friend Ruby isn’t always in attendance (and wasn’t _that_ a surprise the first time she was there, sitting in a chair with her ankle propped up on the stereo casing with a slow, nearly-feral grin spreading across her lips as she beckoned him over to introduce herself), but then, Emma also seems to be nervously fussing with the partition screen that’s usually in the corner hiding all the yoga gear.

Today, it’s dragged to the opposite corner that doesn’t have any windows behind it, and Emma is just finishing hooking a hanger onto the top of it on the side facing the corner.

“So, Ruby has physical therapy and can’t be here, but since we’ve just about gotten the dance down, next comes making you look like a dancer in appearance. I’m very lucky to have a friend in the city willing to overnight male costumes to Granny’s, so we just need to find which one works best for you.” She turns as she finishes speaking, a smile on her face that looks half-predatory – much like a smile he’d expect on Ruby’s face instead of Emma’s.

“Excellent,” is all he can really respond, because Emma’s still giving him that look and he doesn’t know what else to say.

He doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary with the costumes, except that they look a little tighter than what he’d normally choose to wear. That is, however, until he slides on a pair of the trousers. He’s admiring the elastic waist and the satin band at the top of it when he turns to grab the shirt and stops in his tracks.

“Emma?”

“Yes?” She draws out the word, like she’s been waiting for his question since he walked behind the partition. He grabs the hanger with his prosthetic and moves around the screen.

“You seem to have forgotten to explain the order in which my clothing should go on.”

“Yeah, about that.” She reaches out and grabs the sides of the fabric, bringing the bottom portion of the costume into better view. “All of the shirts have these attached so your shirt doesn’t come untucked as you’re dancing. It’s really stretchy. You won’t even notice it!”

Skepticism is an understatement for how he feels. He still tries them on over his boxer-briefs, unsure of etiquette procedures when trying on things that will be intimately touching him if he’s not even going to be wearing some of them. And it’s just as well, since it takes until the third one for Emma to nod approvingly at the option. The first two, as she claimed, just didn’t match her vision.

While she likes the third one, she still urges him back to try on the last one so they’re sure. Before he’s even finished putting it on, he likes it better than the others. There’s a zipper down the front of it that ends at his sternum, and he has to be exceedingly careful while pulling it into place so as not to catch any of his chest hair in it.

He doesn’t feel exposed until Emma is walking around him in a circle, looking at the fit and humming in thought. The arms are made of solid material, but the fabric along his sides and down his back is blocked in a way that thin strips of his bare skin are visible from every angle through the nearly-mesh material. The big positive he can pull from this choice is the fact that the sleeves come down far enough on his wrists that it covers the hardware for his prosthetic. It definitely makes him feel slightly more confident than he was the day Emma kissed him.

“We have a problem,” Emma says suddenly, and Killian looks at her in alarm.

“Don’t tell me I have to lose the trousers or something because I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

“No, no. Nothing like that. It’s just that,” she starts, pausing to move forward and touch the very hair he was afraid of getting caught in the zipper. “We’ve got a bit of a hairy situation going on here.”

He looks down at his chest, and back to Emma, and back down to where her index finger is still resting on his breastbone. “You don’t mean…”

The grim line her lips make answers the question for him.

“I have to…shave it?”

“It might be easier to go to the spa and have them wax it.”

“Pardon?” If his face was the picture of alarm before, he’s not sure what level his expression and his voice pitch would indicate now.

“There’s a great salon in Storybrooke. We can pop out around lunch time in a couple days when no one will notice and have them do it. For now, we practice!” She pushes the screen against the wall again, leaving everything else as is and handing him his shoes. “It’ll help to know how you feel wearing this, so we’ll just do one quick run-through with the costume.”

Emma is wearing the same leggings she normally does, but there’s a sheer skirt swishing around over top of them, and the shoes she’s wearing are in much better condition than the ones she’s been wearing as they’ve been training. He wonders if her nicer shoes are because he’s getting better.

“New shoes?” he asks as he ties his own.

“Nah, performance shoes. I figured now that you’re not stepping on my toes that we can put these ones into rotation.”

“And the skirt?”

“So you can get used to the way my dress will move the day we perform. Ready?”

She doesn’t really wait for his answer, instead grabbing the remote and moving into position as soon as she’s done talking. He’s not the only one that came to the studio extra caffeinated today, it seems.

He wanders around the campgrounds while Emma teaches classes during the late morning a few days later, waving to Liam without even hiding his bemusement as his brother follows a group, all of them carrying kayaks by the ones and twos as they go. They disappear down the beach while Killian wonders if there are any activities that Liam _hasn’t_ tried since they got here, but it certainly seems like the summer away is more beneficial than Killian initially gave it credit for. That goes for both of them.

Checking his watch, he starts to make his way up towards the dance studio so he can meet up with Emma. She’s just coming around the side of the building, her keys in one hand as she slips on a pair of sunglasses.

The yellow car he leads her to gives him pause, however.

“Couldn’t drive anything less obvious?”

“It’s so common to see me around town during the summer that it would be _more_ suspicious if I was driving anything else.”

“And this thing will get us there?”

“Are you insulting my car?” she asked, a raise of her eyebrow and a smile on her lips.

“I wouldn’t dare. This is quite the vessel you captain, Swan.”

“That’s what I thought,” she responded, her tone matter-of-fact as she released the emergency brake and shifted the car into reverse.

And it _is_ quite the car, filled with quirks he’d expect from an old model Volkswagen, but it’s more the way Emma drives it, like she was born to drive nothing else. With the route in her capable hands, Killian leans back and enjoys the scenery, content to watch it pass by like he did on his initial drive in.

After so long of being at the camp, Killian had sort of forgotten that there was a world outside the wooded grounds. Sure, he’d found a new second home in the studio and discovered that there was life outside his rum and cabin, and he’d had the ultimate experience of going with Emma to the staff’s lodge after hours, but things like streetlights, _on streets_ , and storefronts are damn near alien to him at this point. It’s been almost two months since they drove through Storybrooke on their way in, and already his life feels totally different than when they ate lunch at Granny’s.

Since he lost his hand, this is the biggest shift he’s had in his life, and he’s loathe to find any problems with it. As an apprentice in building boats, he dedicated his whole being to crafting the perfect vessel for the customer.

Similarly, learning to dance is just learning a new form of art. He’s aware of every bead of sweat that gathers along his forehead. He’s in tune with every guiding gesture Emma gives him, and the way her breathing always seems to stay even while they’re dancing. He reflects on all of this, trying to acclimate this idea of “new” to his mind and body before they actually arrive.

Currently, he notices the way his heartbeat races just a little bit faster when Emma parks her car along the main stretch of the small town that felt so comfortable and homey to him. She beams at him, instructing him out of the car as she swings open her door.

“I grew up here after David’s mom adopted me,” Emma offers up as she looks up and down the street. “If anyone asks, you’re new staff at the camp.”

He doesn’t mention that he’s already been here, but it hardly seems relevant as she’s leading him down a walkway in the opposite direction of the diner. Her arm loops easily through his, and Killian feels his heart turn over painfully in his chest with the realization of what he’s feeling. It’s attraction. He’s attracted to her. And it’s beyond the idea of physical gratification. The kiss was eye-opening, but this easy affection and compatibility is the real thing.

The kiss can be explained away as a heat-of-the-moment event where the humidity overwhelmed them, the long hours tricked them into an impulsive moment of passion. But as they’ve spent time together and he’s become so harmonious with her movements, he’s also noticed the itch to hold her in his arms. There was no thought behind the kiss, but he’s done plenty of thinking about doing it again.

Even with all the agitation his early foibles caused during her lessons, she would regroup and find patience, and in no time at all he had her laughing at his jokes and smiling at his own special blend of self-deprecation. She’d shake her head and roll her eyes and get them back on track. He also understands that it’s not because she agrees with whatever he claims about himself, but because she can see past whatever he sees in the mirror when he looks at himself. Plus, there’s no pity, even though she now knows much more of his sad backstory than he meant to let on.

She’s never treated him with kid-gloves.

The jingling of a bell over the door Emma opens brings him back to the present, and he relaxes when he discovers they’re just in an ice cream parlor.

“Hi Ingrid,” Emma greets, a wide smile crinkling her eyes as she greets the woman behind the counter. “One rocky road and one rum raisin, please.”

As the older woman scoops the requested flavors, they catch up in a series of quick back-and-forth statements, clearly a ritual honed with time and experience, with Killian’s introduction thrown in there somewhere. Ingrid spends plenty of time shifting her focus between the two of them, but if she has anything to comment about the way Emma is standing close to him, she doesn’t say so.

With cones in hand, Emma motions him back outside and calls out a farewell on her way.

“Let’s call this a preemptive apology for what’s about to happen. But no dancer, no professional one – which is what we’re trying to pass you off as – would have this much chest hair.”

“So this is bribery ice cream,” he clarifies as they stand outside of an innocent looking spa.

“Sure.”

“How’d you know I’d like rum raisin?”

“I had a hunch and hoped for the best,” she admits, smiling between bites of her cone.

With a warm breeze ruffling her hair and her sunglasses perched on her nose, Killian takes a moment to pretend that this isn’t what it is, that it’s something closer to a first date, where they’d take a walk to the docks he can just see in the distance and their fingers would link together. The swooping of his stomach lets him know _exactly_ how he’d feel about such an event, so he releases it from his thoughts to dance away on the summer air. It’s just as well, as he takes the last few bites of his cone and accepts the napkin she hands him. Once they determine there’s no ice cream on either of their faces, she pulls open the door and gestures for him to enter.

“Emma! It’s been too long!” the blonde behind the counter greets Emma much like Ingrid did – with familiarity and years of encounters such as these. The girl, only introduced as Goldie, shakes his hand when they walk up to the counter. “Hot date?” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows at both of them in turn.

Emma laughs, accepting the form and pen that Goldie gives her and starts filling it out. “Yeah, because all good first dates include an appointment at a salon to have chest hair waxed off.”

“Sounds better than some dates I’ve been on,” he comments, raising his eyebrows and looking away again as he looks over the spa options. “Admit it Swan, it’s just further reason to have me shirtless in front of you.”

She squints hard at him, trying to suss out something from what he’s said. “You flirt harder when you’re nervous. You know that?”

He has no response to that, especially when Goldie comes back to the counter and directs them back to a room with a padded table. There’s a chair set up next to it, and a counter displaying a wide variety of products he has no knowledge of.

“Emma, why don’t we wait out in the hallway while Killian undresses?” Emma smirks and nods, heading back out the door while Goldie explains that he needs to get fully naked. “There’s a sheet over there. Just drape that over your waist and I’ll be back in a moment.”

Following directions, he folds his clothes and places them on the chair, hopping up onto the table and spreading the sheet over his waist and legs. He’s comfortable in the knowledge that at least there will be no wax below the belt. Lifting the sheet briefly, he purses his lips. No, no wax. But it could stand to see a set of trimmers. Just as he settles it back down, there’s a soft knock before Goldie edges the door open.

“All set in here?”

“Aye, as I’ll ever be.”

She starts to laugh, but when she enters and gets a look at him it abruptly cuts off. “You were _not_ joking,” she says to Emma as the other woman enters.

“Told you so.” Emma moves his clothes to her lap as she takes a seat, scooting as close to the side of the table as she can. “I’m here for emotional support as long as you need me to be. I’m going to prop my elbow right here, so if you need to hold my hand, it’s there for you. Remember to relax as much as you can, and keep breathing.”

“You’re not helping, love.”

“Yeah,” she says, flashing him a wide grin. “I know. But it’s fun to watch you squirm.”

Goldie surprises him by taking a stick and swiping on a long stripe of what she explains is a hard wax. “We have to let this set up so I’m going to do a couple spaced out swatches and we’ll go from there. How are you at handling pain?”

Lifting his left arm, he raises an eyebrow at her. “I’ve lost a hand, lass. I think I’ll be fine.”

For the record, he’s _not_ fine. It _hurts_. And even after the wax is ripped from his skin, the pain has him reaching out without realizing it and grabbing Emma’s hand. She’s trying so hard not to laugh that she’s almost turning as blue as the wax Goldie is applying to his skin again.

“So glad one of us is enjoying this,” he whimpers out, gritting his teeth as another section of wax is deemed dry enough and Goldie unsticks an edge to get a grip on it.

“You’re doing great,” Emma says, ruffling her free hand through his hair.

He doesn’t notice the next three strips come off because he and Emma have both realized exactly how close they are, how little distance there is between their faces. Her hand pauses in his hair and her other hand relaxes at the same time his does, moving from a gesture of support to one of… is this affection?

The moment is broken when Goldie announces she needs to grab a bottle of lotion from the front room and leaves them alone. He’s so tempted to pull her closer, to taste her lips once more. But he can tell by the rigidity her stance takes on that she’s not on the same page right now. And even if she is, she’s too scared or holding back or hiding from it.

“This alone should be repayment for throwing up on you the day we met,” he says to break the tension. When Emma laughs, he sort of melts on the table. He grins in response, turning to look down at his chest and he makes a noise of disbelief. It’s all gone. “Bloody hell.”

“Wow. _Shit_ you’re pale. Oh god we’re gonna have to tan your chest. Why didn’t I think of that?” She stands, placing his clothes back on the chair to take her place. “I need to make another stop in town. You okay to finish up here? They’ll do clean-up services on your facial hair, too, if you’d like. Just tell Goldie what you want and she’ll take care of it.”

With barely another glance back at him, Emma nearly sprints from the room. He can hear her say something to Goldie and then her voice disappears from range and the door is pushed back open as Goldie enters. “Emma said she’d be back in about a half hour. Want anything else taken care of while you’re here?”

Thinking for a minute, Killian scrunches his nose. It’s not ideal. He’d rather be at home in the privacy of his own bathroom for such things, but he still nods. “I can think of a few things.” Reaching for his shorts, he grabs his wallet and hands over his credit card. “Put the total on there,” he says, grabbing the services sheet from Goldie when she hands it over and tallying up what he’d like.

It’s a while before he slides into his own clothes again, but even when he does he ends up in another chair to get his hair trimmed and his beard clipped. He didn’t realize quite how much all his hair had grown since they got to camp. By the time he’s all done, everything feels clean and crisp, and he’s just starting to get used to the way his shirt feels without the barrier of hair that usually comes between his skin and the fabric.

“Now, apply this lotion again later on. No sweating or swimming for the next twenty-four hours, and come back again in three to six weeks. Okay?”

As far as the “three to six weeks” portion goes, Killian scoffs. His skin is burning in so many places he can’t keep track anymore, but he feels neat and well-kempt and about a stone lighter than when he walked in. He keeps all of the swear words that want to escape to himself though, and just signs the charge slip that Goldie prints and hands to him.

He knocks his sunglasses back onto his nose as he exits the spa, calling out a farewell as he goes, only to nearly collide with Emma.

“Oh! All done?”

“Yep, all taken care of,” he tells her. If his voice is a little tighter than it was when they got to the spa, he’s sure she won’t take it personally. He did just rip off all his chest hair for her.

“I grabbed some food at Granny’s for the ride home. Goldie said you wouldn’t be able to run through the number again today, and I figured you deserve something more than camp food for once.”

“We had food from her on our way in. Best lunch I’ve had in ages.”

“I’m not surprised. Granny’s is basically a rite of passage on the way to camp, even if you’ve never heard of it. Probably has something to do with the fact that she’s the only casual dining place for miles.”

He takes the food from her, setting it on the floor by his feet for the drive back. When he goes to take the small shopping bag from her, however, she quickly throws it into the back seat.

“I’ll give you what you need from that when we get back,” is all she tells him.

They amble their way back through the grounds once they return, with Emma finishing the last of her onion rings and Killian still working through his French fries. She has two plastic bags looped over her wrist, and he waits patiently while she separates the items and hands him one after she’s finished her food.

“Will you need help with the self-tanner?”

“No, I should be able to manage all right,” he says, instilling himself with false-confidence over this matter. It’s not like he’s ever used tanning lotion before. But he’s just as stubborn as she is in many ways, so he decides he’ll figure it out on his own.

“Well, you can take the rest of the day off,” Emma says once they get to a point where she’ll go left for the studio and he’ll go right. She hesitates for a moment, shuffling her feet for just a second before she speaks up again. “My… my cabin is right behind the studio. It’s a little hidden by the trees but if you walk to the back and follow the stone path, you’ll find it. If you need anything and I’m not at the studio, that’s where I’ll usually be. Okay?”

“Aye. Thanks, love.” They stand there in silence for a minute more, not moving closer, not moving away, until voices on the path send them both turning and scurrying away.

The next day, there’s an undercurrent of stress running through both of them. He spends much less time trying to look at the mirror than he thought he would at this point, and looking at his feet is the furthest thought in his mind. He knows from muscle memory when he’s not doing something correctly, but now he doesn’t derail the whole number just because he did one small thing wrong. Instead, he makes a mental note to fix it on the next run-through.

“Stop looking like someone is going to beat you up if you don’t dance the right way,” Emma murmurs as they work through the steps.

“You mean you won’t?”

She snorts, fighting to keep moving with him after that comment if her suddenly jerky turn is anything to go by, but she saves it and they move into the next turn smoothly. “But seriously, just play off my facial expressions so you look like you’re enjoying yourself. Think of what Ruby said.”

The next time they run through, he does his best to smile when she does. He listens when she tells him to relax and have fun, to pretend they aren’t getting ready for a possibly life-altering dance, and he flirts with her through the number, through their movements. It earns him more than one delighted smile and laughter.

When the choreography ends this time, they’re both breathless and smiling.

“Good. You’re good. You got it. I’m not pushing any more today. But I need to ask, how’s the tanning going?”

Killian grimaces. He’s supposed to be putting the lotion on his chest, hand, wrist, neck, and face. Mostly everything is already tanned, so it doesn’t need much. His chest, on the other hand, where all the hair came off is so close to his horrifying winter white.

“It’s… It’s going poorly,” he admits. He purposely left his shirt on for the whole practice for this very reason.

“What? Why?”

He mumbles his response, turning away and probably making it harder for her to hear, but that’s kind of the problem. He doesn’t _want_ her to hear how much he’s struggled with the self-tanning lotion.

“Killian?”

“I can’t apply it alone,” he finally spits out, staring hard at his prosthetic as his fingers pick at the flesh-colored attachment.

“Oh,” she responds, clearly putting the pieces together and then, _“oh._ Okay. Well, um. Bring it with you. Ruby will be here later on and she and I can help. Nothing we haven’t done before, you know.”

And it’s fine when it’s Ruby, even if she’s leering the whole time she’s buffing the lotion across his chest. He rolls his eyes, avoiding eye contact with her the whole time while Emma calls out commentary reminding her to get some of the other parts to even out the color.

When he’d shown up with the bottle of lotion, they had a whole area prepped for the tanning experience, including buffers and gloves, sponges and a sheet to spread on the ground just in case. It was more than he was expecting, and he’s not quite sure how Emma trusted when he said he would do it on his own if it took all of this for them to do it for him.

The next day, when it’s Emma applying the lotion, neither of them speak the whole time, nor make eye contact. She fixates on the work she’s doing while Killian stares at the ceiling, pretending that it’s Liam doing the work to stop his body from reacting.

He’s never been as relieved as when Emma declares on the third day that he’s as even as he’s going to get, and that if he wants to add a little more to his chest on his own, it should be much easier.

“Just apply it before you go to bed tonight, and you should be good,” she tells him, handing over a bag with the mitt and lotion inside. “Remember to blend it upwards into your neck, like we’ve been doing.”

“Aye, I think I’ve got it.” He raises an eyebrow and tries to reassure her the best he can with just that look because as the week has gone on, she’s gotten more and more outwardly nervous. He can relate. It’s a big deal, and it’s unlike anything he’s ever done before, but all he wants is to put her mind at ease that they’ve covered everything they possibly can.

“I can always even it out with makeup tomorrow when we get there,” she tells him, apparently still running through worst case scenarios.

“Emma, love, it’ll be fine. The least of our worries is my sad tan,” he says, smiling and flipping her ponytail back over her shoulder to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Okay. I’ll see you in the morning for another run-through.”

Before he can understand that time has moved so quickly, it’s the day of the performance. Emma meets him after lunch to check that everything with his costume fits well and to do a final run through. She’s still in her practice skirt, and she tells him she’s waiting until they get to the Mills Regency to change into her dress so it doesn’t wrinkle on the drive over.

“You can wear this when we leave or you can change when we get there. Your choice.”

“I’ll leave the outfit in your capable hands and change there.”

He rolls his shoulders, marveling at how different the costume feels without his chest hair. The fabric is silky smooth, as everything has been recently, and he zips and unzips the shirt a few times without fear of injury, grinning as he does so.

“Oh, for the love of… You’re acting like you’ve never used a zipper until today.”

“Swan, I’ve not seen this much of my chest since puberty. Let a man have his fun.”

She mutters something, wandering over to the stereo to grab her remote before coming back to stand in front of him. “Okay, your fun has been had. Let’s run it once.”

It’s odd to run the dance in the costume as he’s meant to be wearing for it. Last time he still had on his boxers. Now, the fabric sticks close to his body, not moving like his t-shirts or button-downs do, not moving like his shorts do. There’s something sleek about it, making him feel like this _is_ a real thing. When he looks in the mirror, he doesn’t see Killian Jones: lost and broken man with baggage dragging behind him as he moves. He sees a version of himself he thought he had lost. This is Killian Jones: determined and ready to pass as a professional dancer.

He’s almost loathe to take it off, but there’s still time until they even perform and he can’t exactly wear it around camp. He changes back into his clothes and helps Emma hang the dance outfit, slipping the garment bag over the whole thing with his shoes in the bottom so it’s all ready to go.

“I’ll see you back here right after dinner?” she asks.

“Aye. I’m sure Liam is so caught up in whatever he’s doing that he won’t even notice I’m gone.”

She nods, cleaning the space in what he now recognizes as a nervous gesture. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Ruby’s going to oversee a couple that’s been learning together. She’s not allowed to dance, but she can coach them from the sidelines just this once. They’ve taken enough classes by now.”

“Good, then I’ll see you later,” he says, giving her a reassuring smile and moving towards the door before he can do something affectionate again, like hug her to expel all her nerves and fears. He has no idea how he’ll handle his emotions when it’s all over, but he’s already dreading the end of this adventure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I'm sorry y'all. It had to go. By far, though, that was the most fun I've had writing a scene. I don't know much about wax, just looked up what I could and I'm fascinated by hard wax. I know it's not typically used for chest waxing but I found videos of it being used. Because that's what I do as a writer. I hunt down videos of men having their chests waxed. LOL


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Performance time for Killian and Emma! And all that follows in the aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that earns the rating! I am so excited to share this one with you all.

The rest of Killian’s day is spent in nerves, and he finds himself pacing and checking the time more than he has in perhaps his whole life. He showers way too early, spending every minute afterwards checking his appearance. He almost wishes for a pair of tweezers to get every last hair out of place on his beard, but sticks to making sure it’s well-conditioned. There’s one look devoted to his chest, sighing at the barrenness; he’s acutely aware of his luck that there’s been no cosmetic disaster, as Goldie had prattled on about as she worked on trimming his other requests.

Liam still hasn’t come around by the time he leaves the cabin, so he ambles across the camp grounds to meet Emma at the base of the stairs to the staff parking lot, and hopes his brother doesn’t notice his absence. He hasn’t for all the rest of the summer; now is not exactly the best time for Liam to start caring again.

Their drive to Portland is mostly spent in silence, broken only when Emma starts rambling last minute pointers as they approach their destination. She reminds him to keep his frame toned, not to dance on the one, and to keep smiling even if he messes up.

“Remember, the only ones that will know if we mess up are us unless we let it show, okay?”

It’s roughly the fourth time she mentions his facial expressions that Killian reaches over and places his prosthetic on her wrist over the gearshift.

“Swan, we’ve got this. You’ve trained me so well at this point that even _I_ believe I’m a dancer. And so will that audience and your potential new boss.” He pauses, shifting and switching so he can rest his hand gently on hers before he continues. “Emma, I don’t know if you remember how much of a broken man I was when you met me. And maybe you don’t realize _just_ how bad it was, but I can promise you this, you didn’t just teach me how to dance – and who knew _that_ was even possible – but you damn near brought me back to life.”

He watches her face closely as it goes from nervous to soft, and from soft to something bashful yet happy. As they’re clipping along at a steady pace, she doesn’t need to shift at the moment, which allows her to twist her hand momentarily to squeeze his hand. “You got all that from a dance? It’s just a dance. How could that have saved you?”

“It’s much more than just a dance, and you know it. But it’s what the lessons exposed. I never thought I would be capable of letting go of my past. Losing Milah, my hand, my former life, any of it, to believe I could be the man I once was. That is, until I met you.”

She chances a look over at him, her eyes saying more than she’s willing to speak out loud if her expression is anything to go by, but that’s enough for him. “Next exit is ours,” she says, instead. “We’ll be there in just a couple minutes.”

With a nod and a smile, Killian releases her hand, returning to looking out the windshield to give her the space she needs.

Emma maneuvers her way easily around the outskirts of the city, pulling up to a port cochere like she’s been there a thousand times already. A valet runs around the side of the car to open the door and assist her out of the vehicle while Killian steps out of the passenger seat, listening intently as she explains that they’re here to perform and that Regina is taking care of the parking before she hands over her keys.

Killian is too busy staring up at the towering hotel to pay much attention to what she’s actually saying to the valet. This isn’t big by New York City or Boston standards, but there’s something intimidating about the sheer size of the building, and it’s clear just from the outside that “opulence” is an understatement. He hears the door shut, and the car drive away, and then Emma is at his side with their garment bags thrown over her shoulder.

“Come on, I’ll show you where you can get ready. Once I have my hair and makeup done, I’ll come help you with yours.”

He opens his mouth to ask if she means his hair or his makeup, as a joke, but she’s ushering him inside and down a pristine hallway to a conference room that she explains is being reserved for them as performers. When she leaves, he diligently changes into the leotard and trousers, stretching to make sure everything is lining up where it’s supposed to be. He’s only thankful the fabric covers his rear end and isn’t a thong, like Emma told him some of them are. He combs back his hair and sits in one of the leather chairs that crowd the table, waiting for the woman in question while trying to keep his nerves steady.

“Would a shot from your flask help wipe that expression off your face?” she asks as she enters the room a while later.

Killian opens his mouth to respond, but his jaw goes slack as he takes in the sight of her. The pale pink dress hugs her torso tightly, but the skirts flow around her legs, ending just below her knees. He watches the gentle sway of the fabric, suddenly longing to feel the texture between his fingers. Her hair is all up, expertly styled so not a single hair is out of place, and her makeup accentuates everything on her face. Whereas the first time he saw her dance she was all smoke and mystery, this time she is soft and bright. He’s stunned to silence, even as she keeps talking and grabs a jar of hair gel from her bag and approaches him.

“You okay?”

“Didn’t bring my flask,” he says, finally able to form a response but it comes out barely above a whisper.

“Well, that’s fine. You’ll be great. You _have_ been an excellent student,” she tells him, a playful smile on her lips as she uncaps the jar and starts running her fingers through his hair. And that’s what finally pulls him back to the present is Emma’s fingers gently tugging at the strands as she applies the gel. His eyes flutter shut, his body relaxing into the plush of the leather chair, and he forgets all about his nerves and the stress of performing. He barely manages to peel open his eyes as she grabs a comb and makes final adjustments before making a noise that he assumes is her triumph over his unruly hair.

“There. All set with the hair. You’re missing… something. Hang on,” she tells him, moving away to wipe her hands on a napkin from the water stand in the center of the table. She reaches for her bag and when she returns, she holds up a small pencil-looking item in glee.

“Really?”

“Really,” she responds, uncapping the pencil and leaning in close. Her left hand goes behind his neck to hold him steady while she applies the eyeliner with sure strokes. “Look up,” she murmurs, her face so damn close to his and her lips so tempting with their pink shimmer. “A little eyeliner goes a long way,” she comments, switching between his eyes to apply the makeup. He sucks in a deep breath, fixating his gaze over her shoulder so as not to cause himself any embarrassment.

A couple times, however, he can’t help but look at her, to watch her face as she diligently works. Up close, he can see every facet of color in her eyes. He can see her own eyeliner, the fact that she’s wearing fake lashes, and he can smell the sweet mint on her breath from the candy he can just discern as she rolls it back and forth in her mouth. She leans back suddenly, staring at her handiwork, entirely oblivious to the war raging inside him. Emma Swan is supposed to be off limits.

But then again, he knows how she kisses. He knows her hopes and fears. He knows her past and her dreams for the future. He knows that right now she’s smiling and making a joke but on the inside she is turmoil and nerves, just as he is. He was supposed to help the lass with a dance, not bloody fall in love with her.

“Okay, let me wash my hands real quick and then we’re gonna go wait in the wings until it’s our turn. You can leave everything here while we’re performing. The sound guys have our music already and now all we have to do is wait!”

She swishes from the room in nervous excitement while Killian remains glued to his chair. It’s partly because he’s a bit terrified to go out there, but also because yes, he _did_ just admit his true feelings for his lovely companion to himself. He finally manages to extract himself from the chair and closes the door as he goes. Emma rejoins him a moment later, linking her arm through his and leading him towards the ballroom.  

Everything blurs together as they count down the dances before theirs, especially when Emma grabs his hand the number before theirs and doesn’t let go. Then she pulls him out to the darkened stage. There’s a single dim spotlight shining on where they pose to start, and Killian quickly sends up a brief prayer to whatever deity is listening that he remembers all his steps, that his prosthetic doesn’t fly off during the routine somehow, that he doesn’t slip and fall on his face or – worse – drop Emma on hers.

The music starts, and when Emma’s eyes meet his, it’s as if everything else around them softens down to nothing. There is no audience. There is no spotlight. It’s just the two of them moving together. He remembers to look out and keep the smile and expressions going, but he doesn’t _see_ what’s beyond them. He reacts to every move and under-her-breath directive, and he moves better than he ever did in practice. That he can feel in his heart.

The dance itself simultaneously lasts forever and flies by. He ticks off each set of moves in his head as they go through: basic steps, the series of under arm turns where Emma arcs around him, the swivels that cause her hips to twist in rapid succession which have always mesmerized him. Unlike in practice, however, he manages to keep his eyes on her face, and thus gets to see the bright smile she bestows upon him for not looking down.

Between her subtle cues and words of encouragement, he can’t believe they’re on the last set of moves until they’re there. It’s just a matter of making it through the spin lift, the only one she felt confident he could handle with the amount of time she had to teach him, and while he has to do nothing more than support her and turn at the same time, he still almost holds his breath as it begins. Right as he lifts her, however, she turns into him a little more, her hand coming to rest on his cheek as his arm wraps around her waist and holds tight.

His heart beats faster, not because of the exertion, but because the same look he feels is in his eyes is reflected in her own. The moment lasts forever in his mind, but he can still feel himself pivoting, can feel the shift they start to make together for him to gently ease her back to the ground so her feet land as if on a cloud. And then it’s over; they move through the ending together, until he spins her back into his arms and their foreheads touch.

The music ends and the audience starts clapping, and that’s when he finally remembers to actually look out and _see_ them. There are a couple whistles among the applause, which causes them both to smile widely as they bow before heading off the opposite way they entered.

Once they reach the wings of the stage again, Emma launches herself into his arms, hugging him tight and shaking with laughter. “You did so great! Holy shit, I could’ve sworn you were a pro for that! Killian,” she says quietly, pulling away and framing his face with her hands. “I am so proud of you. That was amazing.”

She hugs him again, tight, whispering another thanks into his shoulder as he hugs her back just as tightly. He fights back sudden tears because he honestly can’t remember the last time someone told him they were proud of him.

He’s still in a bit of a daze as they gather their street clothes and head out, deciding that they’ve been away from camp long enough and can’t delay the trip back any longer. The only thing they change is their shoes, at Emma’s insistence, so nothing gets damaged when they walk outside. “Huh, I have a missed call from Ruby,” Emma mentions as they climb back into the car. “I’ll call her when we get back. She must be dying to know how it went.”

The drive back to camp is spent by rehashing every single move of the dance. Killian excitedly points out all the places he normally messed up but didn’t this time around while Emma proudly smiles at him, throwing her own commentary into the mix as they go through.

“And the spin lift… Let’s go back and do it again,” Killian exclaims just as they’re pulling into the staff parking lot, and Emma throws back her head and laughs.

She parks in her usual spot, pulling the e-brake into place, and turning off the car. She grabs the collar of the costume shirt before Killian can exit the vehicle, moving so fast that he’s still chuckling, as well, and at first she can only press her smile to his.

And then she kisses him proper. His breath backs up into his lungs, the adrenaline surging through him once more at the successful way they snuck away from camp, and the performance, and the way she shifts to get closer to him as her tongue maps out his mouth and tangles with his own. He hums into it, a contented sound that she echoes just a second later.

“Consider us even,” she says when she pulls away, a sultry smile on her lips as she unhooks her seatbelt and shoves open her door. Killian bites his lip, following suit and taking the bags from her once he’s locked and shut the passenger door. There’s heat simmering between them, and Killian wants nothing more than to throw the garment bags to the ground and find out what it would feel like to kiss her here in the open, with the stars just beginning to appear overhead.

He’s patient; he’ll wait if that’s what she wishes, but he’s at least going to be a gentleman and walk her back to her cabin. If he’s hoping for one more peck of a kiss when he gets there, then that’s all his business. That can be it, then, right? Then maybe, after camp is over, they can explore all the rest.

Waiting that long might be difficult, but he’s waited all this time for someone like Emma to walk into his life. No matter what, he’ll take it at her pace, leave their fate in her hands.

The fates have different plans in store though, as Liam and the camp owners are waiting almost at the bottom of the stairs that lead into camp. Liam looks angry, but also relieved when he sees Killian, even if his eyebrow pops up in question when he looks closer. The expression on the Nolans’ faces is something like parental disappointment, and Killian wonders just how much trouble Emma will be in because of all of this.

Before they can open their mouths to provide an explanation, the three respective family members are all lecturing at once. Killian catches an “I thought you were dead in a ditch,” from Liam, and something along the lines of “rules about guests,” directed at Emma from her brother.

“Stop!” Emma says firmly when the three voices start reaching high pitches of concern. “None of this is Killian’s fault, just to be clear,” she says, mostly to Liam. “I asked him to help me with a performance at a hotel in Portland and he agreed. We were hoping we’d be back before anyone noticed us missing, but clearly we didn’t.”

“You left your mobile on the bathroom counter,” Liam informs him. “I was worried you drank yourself into an early grave when I couldn’t get ahold of you.”

“I’m quite alive and well, thank you. Why don’t we continue this in private?” With his lips pressed together, he turns to Emma. She grabs the bags and feels the tops of both before handing his back to him. “Sorry, love,” he whispers, trying to give her a smile and failing in the face of the other adults staring them down. “I’ll return the costume tomorrow afternoon.”

She just nods, her eyebrows lifting almost imperceptibly before she raises her hand in farewell. There’s another nod, so small, that he almost cocks his head in question, but she turns away as Liam starts to head toward their cabin and he’s expected to follow.  

“I know what you guys are gonna say, but it’s really not what you think it is,” he hears her say before they’re out of earshot. He only hopes that the owners will take some kind of mercy and that the performance didn’t cost her _this_ job, or her family.

“You like her,” Liam says when they’re a bit down the path. “I recognize that look on your face. You _like_ the lass, don’t you?”

“Sod off.” He refuses to give any other answer than that regarding his feelings for Emma, because he knows how utterly transparent his heart is right now.

“Fine, fine.” Liam’s silent for a moment until they’re entering the cabin. “It’s time to be honest, you’re not the only one with a crush at this camp,” he admits when the screen door is closed behind them.

“Oh?”

“I’ve taken quite the interest in the yoga instructor, as you guessed. No need to say ‘I told you so’ about it, however.” His voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper, adding on, “and she to me. But we’ve decided to wait until camp has ended to do anything about that. So tell me about Emma, and this performance, and that outfit of yours while I make you some dinner. And where the blazes your chest hair’s wandered off to.”

Killian can’t help the sound that escapes him – part sigh, part chuckle, and he doesn’t even fight the grin that appears as he starts to tell Liam how the last month and a half has transpired.

-x-

“So tell us what we’re seeing then,” David says as soon as the Jones brothers disappear down the path.

“I didn’t want to tell you guys until anything was solid, but I got a job audition at Regina’s hotel in Portland.” She figures the easiest way to calm them down might be to soften it with a possibility that she’ll be moving closer to home.

“Emma, that’s wonderful!” Snow exclaims, grabbing Emma’s free hand and squeezing it. “But honey, why were you with a guest, and why would you take him off camp grounds? You know that’s not allowed.”

“When Ruby hurt herself, I didn’t have a dance partner. Killian ah… he owed me a bit of a favor – long story – but he offered to let me teach him a dance so I could still go through with the audition without Ruby. Regina knew I would be subbing another dancer for the time being but Ruby and I would be both performing regularly at the hotel if we get this.”

“So you’ll be moving closer to home?” David asks, still skeptical about what he’s hearing if his face is anything to go by.

“Yeah, I mean. Closer than Boston, which means I can probably visit a lot more outside of camp months.” She’s deliberately baiting them now, trying to avoid the uncomfortable conversation that could potentially follow.

“That would be so great,” Snow reiterates. David, however, still has that pinched fatherly look that Emma hates to see.

“Emma, we still have to talk about your behavior with Killian.”

“I haven’t done anything seriously wrong. I didn’t break your major rules. There’s no relationship with him, and I managed to teach him without cancelling a single lesson or performance at the main lodge. I’ve been juggling all of this by myself since Ruby’s fall. You know I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my job here. I love this place, and I love my family.”

“We love you, too. But Emma, if you ever do something like this again, we’re going to have to consider a suspension.”

“That’s… harsh. But okay.” She should shut her mouth and just go to her cabin, but before she can turn and walk away, her heart starts speaking for her. “You know, that whole rule about guests is something you should reconsider. It’s okay for campers to see other campers, and counselors to see other counselors. Why is it such a big deal if someone starts to see a guest since we’re all adults here?”

“Emma? Is there a reason you’re bringing this up?”

_Uh oh,_ she thinks. Snow’s scary teacher voice is enough to not only get elementary school kids in line, but to get any reasonable adult to straighten up, as well.

“No, of course not. I just think you two should think about it,” her voice is smaller than it’s been around her brother and sister-in-law for ages. If she’s not careful, she’ll tell them that she’s kissed him, and she really doesn’t need that next level of what could be said between the three of them. And she still needs a job for the rest of the summer. _And_ she also values her life. Instead, she hedges away from it. “I’m… I’m sorry. Really sorry. It won’t happen again. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

David’s face hasn’t changed during the whole conversation, and he looks like he’s about to push her previous statement again, but Snow puts her hand on David’s chest and stops him before he says anything.

“Okay, Emma. We trust you. Just don’t let it happen again.”

Snow hugs her, careful not to disturb the bag over her arm, before dragging David back to their cart to drive back to their cabin. It’s not even that late but she feels too exhausted to think about going to the main lodge for dinner. She’s sure she has something in her cabin, but she’s more interested in getting a shower and changing into pajamas than eating much of anything right now.

Emma hangs the garment bag on her closet door and unzips it, hoping she was correct in her quick decision. She smiles when she encounters a pair of jeans instead of the yoga pants she wore on the way out to Portland. This _is_ Killian’s bag. Now to hope that he understood the rest of what she was indicating.

_Sure,_ she thinks to herself as she strips off her dress and throws it off to the side. _Tell Snow and David that you’re sorry, you won’t do it again, there’s nothing to worry about…_ And then she’s all but asked Killian to the lion’s den.

She sighs, pulling the clothes out and setting them off to the side. She puts the shoes with her dance stuff, making a mental note to pack them with the studio costumes for the rest of the summer. She hangs her dress and slips the bag over it before heading off to shower. She’ll feel better once her hair can move freely again, that’s for sure.

When she gets out, she slips on a fresh pair of sleep shorts but hesitates when she grabs the tank top she slept in the night before. Instead, she grabs Killian’s t-shirt and slips it on. It smells like him, and she reminds herself that it’ll likely be her little secret. She’ll return it to him tomorrow if he doesn’t show up. No one will know a thing.

Just as she’s finishing putting her makeup back where it belongs, there’s a knock on the door to her cabin. Her heart beats a whole lot harder when she sees Killian on the other side of it, his right hand fiddling with the garment bag on his left arm. He looks up the second she answers the door, swallowing hard as if he’s suddenly having the same problem breathing as she is. Or maybe it’s the fact that his white t-shirt might be the tiniest bit transparent and she’s not wearing a bra.

“I’m sorry for showing up at such a late hour. If you’re too tired, this can wait.” His eyes sweep her appearance again, her wet hair hanging loose around her shoulders and her face scrubbed free of all the makeup she applied earlier.

“No, no. It’s okay. Come in?” She shuts the door behind him, moving around to kick a few pairs of shoes off to the side and scoop up some delicates to place in her hamper. Maybe she should’ve picked up a bit before she showered. “I see you changed. And uh, discovered the mix up.”

“I decided comfort over speed,” he says, glancing around the small cabin space and clearly skirting the fact that she orchestrated this meeting. “Showered to get all that damn glue out of my hair, as well.” She turns to look at him, to admire those calves she’s been trying to not stare at while they’ve been training these last few weeks. He looks good in the dance costume, but he looks even better dressed down as he is right now in a pair of loose shorts and a fresh t-shirt.

“No leotard?”

He scoffs, smiling as he shakes his head. “No. No leotard. Nice shirt,” he adds on, his eyes flicking down to it and back to her eyes, the move slow and deliberate.

So he doesn’t see her blush and smile, she turns to stop the record that’s been playing since she got out of the shower. It starts to dawn on her what she’s doing, what she’s asking him to do by being here like this. _Is it a mistake? Will I regret it in the morning?_ The answer to both of the questions, in her humble opinion, is no. But anyone else might have more to say about it. She’s so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she doesn’t hear his footsteps move across the worn hardwood floor.

“Leave it on,” he says, much closer than before, the heat of his body warming her back and his hand gentle on her wrist. They stand there suspended in the moment, quiet, the music background noise to the racket in her head. Her internal decision makers are at war, and the part of her that knows better – the part of her that only ever does the right thing, and promised Snow and David that there was no reason for them to worry about her involvement with Killian, the one that puts everyone else first – is quickly losing the battle.

She clears her throat in one last attempt to give that half of her brain a shot, but she’s one step from throwing caution to the wind. “Killian.”

“I know, love. If you tell me to leave now, I will. Without a doubt. Without a fight. But if you’re going to say those words, you need to know that you truly brought my heart back to life. I’d wait forever for you, because it feels as if I already have.” As he speaks, his breath flutters against her neck, his hand traveling to wrap around her fingers. His prosthetic rests on her waist, the weight of it now more familiar than she ever imagined. “Should I…?”

“Don’t go,” Emma finally responds. The unattended record switches songs, and an old tune kicks out of the speakers with a slow and gentle beat. “Dance with me.” She doesn’t turn yet, not when his body presses closer for a second, his lips ghosting across a spot on the back of her neck, before she spins in his arms.

His prosthetic rests on her waist once more as she places her hands on his shoulders. It’s like the high school dance she always wanted to go to, except way better. She can’t hide her surprise when he smoothly fits them together to dip her back, his hand holding steady along her ribcage. As she comes back up, she comes nose to nose with him. There’s a lightness in his eyes that she’s never seen, or at least didn’t let herself notice, and a teasing smile just at the corner of his lips.

“Hey, how long has it been since you had a drink?”

“Since the first day you started teaching me. I allowed myself the balm to soothe my aches that night and then I hid my flask away and haven’t touched it since.”

Emma leaves the gentle rock of his embrace to circle around him, encouraging him to remove his shirt as she pulls away. She takes a moment to appreciate the smooth skin of his chest. Truth be told, she already wants the hair to grow back so she can feel it beneath her fingertips in a much different scenario this time. Her lips graze his shoulder as she moves, trailing across his shoulder blades next as her fingers glide along his skin.

“I don’t know, I kinda miss the hair.” She stops when she’s directly behind him, sliding her hands up his chest, enjoying the way his muscles twitch and jump beneath her touch. He grunts as she moves back down and along his waist to shimmy his shorts off his hips until they land on the floor.

“Aye, so do I. It’s a bit cold without it.” His voice is lower, an undercurrent of want tinting the words.

“Also kinda wish you’d left the leotard on, now.” Her hand brushes over the top of his boxer briefs before dropping down across his ass. The cotton of his underwear is smooth, but she longs for the silky fabric that would’ve provided next to no barrier between her skin and his.

“Maybe next time,” he says, his voice even tighter as he licks his lips and his hand clenches at his side. It’s just this side of a growl, and the sound of it goes straight to the wetness between her legs.

“Next time, huh? What makes you think there will be another night like this?”

“If there isn’t, I swear I’ll put the bloody thing on right now and we’ll get it all out of our systems in this one night.” He starts to move towards the garment bag he’d set down when he walked in but she stops him, pulling him down to kiss him once, solidly, just a firm press before she moves away for a second.

“Not a one-time thing,” she says quickly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and kissing him once more. From there, they abandon the pretense of dancing, instead letting intimacy lead their feet to the bed and their hands to wander. Her breathing shallows when he pulls her flush against him, his cock already hard from their different kind of foreplay. He hikes her thigh up over his hip and presses right against her, and that’s when she finally releases that do-gooder side for real. _This_ she wants. _This_ she’s going to take, because it’s willingly being offered to her and because she’s a grown woman who knows what she wants.

“Hang on,” she says, holding her finger to his lips for just a second to pause their attentions so she can go find the condoms she bought at the drugstore when they were in Storybrooke (best whim she’s ever had), and he nips at her finger before releasing his hold on her. She has to go into her closet to find the bag stashed way in the back, and she can hear him fiddling with the stereo in the meantime. The song switches to the one she recognizes immediately as one of the first songs they danced to what feels like ages ago now. She tosses the bag onto the bed before making her way back into his arms.

She takes a moment to strip his t-shirt over her head, and he gets a good eyeful of her bare breasts before she’s kissing him again. His hand resumes wandering enough for his eyes as they each seek to control the kiss.

This dance is much more intimate than that first time they danced, obviously. But they shift together as he fits his leg between hers. She bends back, trusting his hold as she arches her back and extends her arms over her head. He runs his fingers from her bellybutton up, veering over to palm one of her breasts before his fingers close around that nipple and pull – just enough, just until the noise stutters out of her – and repeating the same motion on the other. She rolls up, but he’s moved again, his lips following the same path his fingers just did, a gentle nibble to each breast accompanying. She holds his head steady, encouraging him with quiet words as he teases her in all the right ways.

Already, she can feel an orgasm building with the way he urges her to keep riding his leg and the attentions to her chest. She’s so close, her movements turning harsh as she rubs harder, feeling no shame as her own slickness wets through her shorts and against his leg. His hand returns to her waist, guiding her to speed up and chase her pleasure as his mouth closes around the soft skin of her breast again and he sucks a mark into the top of it. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and neck, her hands finding purchase in his hair just in time for her to shudder hard and fall apart against him. She might cry out, she might call his name as she comes, but she’s only aware of the way she feels and the pleasure coursing through her whole body.

Killian kisses his way up her chest and neck, back up to her lips, and his hand dips down to grab her ass and fit her tight against his erection. Despite how boneless she already feels, it’s a thrill to know that’s all for her – all _because_ of her. When Emma feels like she can move her legs without collapsing, she walks him backwards until he’s standing at the foot of her bed. Taking great pleasure in feeling the way his muscles tense and shift beneath her hands, she eases the boxer briefs from his hips and urges him back onto the bed. She’s all too happy to discard her own shorts before climbing up onto the bed after him.

They make up their own choreography from that point, with Killian arching off the bed as her hand wraps around his cock. For just a moment, she takes him into her mouth, swirling her tongue around the head once before pressing her tongue along the underside. When his hand clenches the bedsheets so hard his knuckles turn white, she releases him with one last lick to the head before she moves to straddle his thighs while she gets the condom on him.

“This all seems tidy,” Emma comments idly, taking in where the waxing would’ve ended and noticing how well-groomed he is below the waist.

“May have gotten a few other services done at the spa.”

“You did this for me?”

Killian raises up on his elbows, his eyes open and honest. “With no expectations whatsoever, but yes.”

“Good.”

Slowly, she sinks down the length of him until she’s seated fully on his lap, her breathing rapid as she squeezes her muscles around him once to bask in the way he fills her up. Killian falls flat to his back again, his hand resting high on her thigh as she adjusts.

They move together then, their dance frenzied. She’s on the brink of another orgasm, and even closer when he presses the heel of his palm against her clit. It serves to increase the feeling of him inside of her, too, and she cries out softly as she grabs the headboard of the old, sturdy bed and works her hips faster against him.

“Killian,” she sighs, her eyes sliding shut as he gathers her close to kiss her as he plants his feet on the bed to thrust up into her. It’s a smaller one, this time, but she wants one of the spectacular ones while he’s inside of her.

She needs more – more friction, more speed – and Killian slips out briefly in order to flip their positions. She’s not entirely sure she didn’t say it out loud, but he eases back into her and she forgets all together.

“Okay?” he asks quietly, and she opens her eyes to look at him, nodding just once and wrapping her legs around his waist to open the angle. With the change in sensation for him, he groans low and props himself on his left elbow so his right hand can explore while he kisses her again. His hand shifts between stroking her cheek to toying with a nipple, to grasping her waist as he briefly lifts enough to watch them come together. As he speeds up, he reaches for her hand, holding it tightly between their chests as he looks into her eyes.

It doesn’t take long from there, with their bodies becoming slick from the warmth of coming together, and she watches his face as his climax hits, watches the way his eyes squeeze shut and he grits his teeth. He keeps going, keeps fucking her until one last of her own washes through her and she calls his name again.

He rests on top of her, the weight of his body comforting and grounding as they both come down from that ultimate high. To her, sex and performing are almost synonymous, but her adrenaline from Killian is much more than when they danced for a whole audience tonight. Her legs slide from around his waist and he repositions to settle while braced on his elbows. He leans down once to kiss the space between her breasts, and her breath catches somewhere in her throat.

“I thought you were the height of sensual when we first danced together. I was very wrong,” he says, the words reverberating against her chest from where he’s still lingering.

As the liquid sensation fades from her limbs, she lifts her hand to push his hair off his forehead, stroking down his cheek in the process. He looks up at her, then, his eyes hooded and sleepy, and he turns to nip at her palm this time, smiling against her skin. She smiles back, crooking her finger under his chin to draw him up for a kiss. It’s one they both sigh into, and Emma’s all too happy to oblige when he shifts around to lie down beside her and tugs her closer.

With her head pillowed on his shoulder, she drifts in and out of sated sleep, only moving again when he moves them into a more comfortable position. Once her head hits the pillow, she’s asleep, her hand securely tangled with his once more.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Killian get to experience the blissful time after their first night together, plus some. And then, the other shoe finally drops, so to speak.

When Emma wakes again, it’s just before morning, and Killian is just starting to shift and stretch. Somewhere in the night, he’d turned to his other side and she’s now effectively wrapped around him from behind. There’s no room for embarrassment though, not when he lifts one of her hands to his lips to kiss the back of it.

It doesn’t take long for her to remember how those lips felt kissing her and she lets her hands wander down to grasp his cock, leading to a satisfied noise coming from Killian as he turns his head.

“You know,” Emma says, moving to look at the clock on her nightstand, “the studio isn’t booked until late morning. Want to get in some early morning dance practice?” To emphasize her point, she squeezes the base of his cock and gently bites at his shoulder.

He partially rolls back so he’s facing her, grabbing a few loose strands of her hair and tucking them behind her ear. “Swan, that is the best dance invitation I think I could ask for.”

They keep most of the lights off in the studio, turning the stereo on low as they find out more about their new rhythm, and when he crowds her against one of the floor length mirrors along the wall, she gets to watch up-close how her face looks when he takes her from behind. She gets to watch how she follows his lead and widens her stance to give him better access, dropping her hips so he slides in easily. She thinks _finally_ as they watch each other fall apart this time, her hands braced against the mirror. He places his own hand next to hers and she admires the twin handprints that are left behind, making a mental note to wipe that down before her first lesson in a few hours.

He leaves her cabin just after dawn, his clothes from last night back in place and his jeans from the day before tucked under his left arm. They still both look around carefully, checking to make sure they really _are_ alone as Killian kisses her once more before leaving.

They’ve decided to keep up the pretense of dance lessons, because she has plenty of others that attend all summer long, and Snow and David can’t really _assume_ anything is going on between them. She worries, just a little, about what could happen, but their second week together she brings up that fear as they listen to the night sounds just beyond her cabin walls.

“What do you think they’ll do if they find out?”

“It’s hard to say. I’m family, and they’ve always let me kind of do my own thing, but I’ve never broken this rule before.”

“No other handsome men promising to learn an entire dance routine and then unapologetically crawling into your bed afterwards?”

Emma chuckles, because he knows there hasn’t been. He’s the first dance client (if that’s what they can call him) that she’s ever slept with, period. Everyone else has been a fellow instructor or unrelated to her profession.

“You’re one of a kind,” she says, and she doesn’t just mean in their situation. She means the whole package that is Killian Jones.

“As are you, love.” He says it quietly, and his face is so serious, that she can’t help the way she clings to him as she kisses him again and again. “I’ll set my alarm for five, just to be safe,” he tells her when they finally break apart, and she watches as he sets the time and places his phone on the nightstand next to hers before he wraps himself around her once more.

It’s been ages since she’s worked with a partner that isn’t Ruby, but he fit with her so well when it came to the performance. The same goes with the way they fit together at night. Emma can’t even remember the last time she let someone spend the night in her bed but with Killian, they just _work_.

The sound of his alarm jolts her awake, but Killian reaches for his phone and silences it before she can sit up. He encourages her to remain sleeping, kissing her temple once and happily obliging when she pulls him down for a mouth kiss without even opening her eyes.

“I’ll see you later,” he whispers against her cheek before he rises from the bed and dresses quietly. She’s asleep again before he’s even out the door.

The next time she wakes up, it’s to Ruby damn near knocking down the door. _“Emmaemmaemma,”_ comes the quick chanting of her name and she struggles from sleep and has enough sense to slip on her clothes before finally wrenching the door open to look at her friend. “Oh. _Oh hey._ Why were you sleeping so late? Never mind, don’t tell me. I just need to share this _news with you_.” With that, Ruby opens the screen door and pushes Emma all the way back in the cabin until she’s sitting on the edge of her bed.

It’s only then that Emma’s eyes go wide and she hopes to all higher powers that Killian’s t-shirt isn’t, you know, on her body, and that they remembered to throw away the condom and wrapper from last night.

“So I rode with Mulan into town today and checked the email account. Bright and early this morning there was an email from Regina asking us to come in for negotiations and to sign a _contract. Next month. We got the job!_ ”

The end of the sentence is all pushed together and higher pitched than she’s heard Ruby in a long time and it takes Emma a whole ten seconds to register what Ruby just told her. But when it does all compute through her sleep-addled brain, she’s up and clutching Ruby’s hands and just as loud. “We got it? Holy shit, we got it!”

For a moment, they’re teenagers again, jumping around and screaming their excitement to the beams of her ceiling. They’re both breathless and laughing by the end of it and Emma worries for just a moment about her friend’s ankle, but Ruby seems to have aced her physical therapy and is moving with no problems that she can see.

“Regina said that your stand-in partner was great, so any time you wanted to dance with him, she’d be happy to sign him on, too,” Ruby says, an over-exaggerated wink accompanying the information.

Emma just laughs, letting go of Ruby to spin once around the room. “Also, how’s your ankle?”

“Doing great. I was actually in town to see the foot and ankle specialist at the hospital and we ended up going super early so I could see Granny. Everything looks back to normal! I’ve just started walking again to build up more strength and I’m stretching everything every day. Victor said to come down once a week for the rest of the summer just to keep an eye on it, but he was the one that told me to go to SBH to get the all-clear.”

“That’s great! After we figure out what we’ll be working, we can figure out which routines and start on all that. When is the lease up?”

“You really want to do it? You wanna relocate and everything?”

“Wasn’t that the whole point of this?”

“ _Yes_ , I just… I didn’t know if you’d have some better reason to stay in Boston, now.” The look Ruby gives her is innocent, but her eyes dart to two different locations and Emma shifts to see that yes, while Killian’s shirt may not be on her, it’s definitely on her floor, and an open condom wrapper is about three feet away from where she threw it off the bed last night.

“Ruby…”

“Nope. The less I know is better for now. Just don’t get caught. You can tell me all about it when the summer is over.”

She could take the out. She could walk away from the conversation right now, but suddenly it becomes so heavy and she needs to share just the tiniest piece with her best friend. “Red, I think I like him. A lot.”

“As in?”

“I won’t say that much, yet. But I care about him.”

Ruby’s look softens considerably, and she reaches over and pulls Emma into a tight hug. “I’ve got your back if you need me,” she reminds her. “Okay, I’m going to start making a list of everything we need to take care of. I know that’s usually your thing, but since you got us the job, I figure it’s my turn. Regina did say the job wouldn’t start until October so we’ll have plenty of time to get it all figured out before then.”

“I’m going to have to get into the studio for a lesson in an hour, but we should grab lunch when I’m done.”

“Won’t you be with a certain Mambo partner? _Mambo_ -ing? In your _bed_?”

“He has lunch with his brother, you pervert. Now go on!” She shoos Ruby towards the door. “I have to shower and clean this place up. I’ll see you for lunch!”

With another parting shot that Emma snorts at, Ruby is out the door. Emma turns and looks at the cabin, letting out a relieved breath that it was only her friend instead of her brother. With that thought hot on her heels, she moves around the room and finds anything that could out her new romance. Relationship? What is this, anyway?

Emma thinks about what Ruby said about moving away from Boston and she wonders if it would work when she gets back home. She also wonders if it would work if she moves to Portland, but it’s so hard to say how any of it would go when she doesn’t even know what to call this. With a shake of her head, she hides away the trash in the very back of her closet; she’ll take it to Storybrooke with her if that’s what she has to do. For now, she needs to get into the shower and get on with her day.

She decides that the first thing she’ll do when Killian gets back later is program his number into her phone, and hers into his, so that at least that lane of communication will be open.

Ruby surprises her after her lessons with a full picnic spread from the main lodge. They make their way to a spot behind her cabin, hidden away from all others and all ears. Only then does Ruby break and pry into all the details.

“When did it start? Wait, wait. No. How did the performance go? Let’s start there. I can’t believe I haven’t been able to talk to you sooner!”

“It was great, obviously, if Regina suggested my other partner comes to dance sometime. I wish you could’ve seen it. I wonder if she taped them all. Maybe I can ask when we meet with her. He was just so _on_ during the whole thing, Red. You would’ve been impressed.”

“I already am! Okay, now the good stuff.”

“After we got back, you know they cornered us, right?”

“Yeah, unfortunately. They came to me when they couldn’t find you because his brother couldn’t find him and left his cell phone here.”

“Dammit, Killian.”

“Yeah, mostly just shitty luck. You guys almost made it!”

“Well, the funny thing is, it didn’t start until then. I may have, um, switched our garment bags. He brought mine back to me, and well, he didn’t leave.” Despite the fact that she and Ruby have been through so many post-mortems on dates and other kinds of adventures, Emma still blushes as she tells Ruby this. “This all feels completely different, Ruby. I don’t know what to do now, or when we leave, or what comes next.”

“You guys will figure it out. Somehow. I have faith that this will all work.”

“Since when did you become an optimist?”

“When I started dating Mulan.”

Emma holds her hand to her throat in mock exasperation. “You let me spill all my secrets and held all your cards to your chest? Unfair.”

“Yeah, well, mine is about a thousand times less scandalous, so.”

They spend the rest of their lunch talking about Ruby’s new relationship – much less nerve-wracking to talk about on camp grounds – and what will happen in the weeks that follow. It’s all new, all exciting, and Emma never could’ve guessed this was what would happen when they came to Camp Hope this year.

“You gonna tell David and Snow about the job now?”

“Soon. For now, I have to think about how to politely tell you to start teaching your own classes again after this week.”

Ruby throws back her head and laughs. “Yeah, I guess I can start pulling my weight again. After all, you got us a shiny new job.”

Lessons for the rest of the day go by quicker than she expected they would, which means that when Killian walks up the short staircase right when she’s finishing up cleaning the studio, she’s actually startled by how the day has flown by.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d gotten to the main lodge to grab dinner, or if you had anything left in your kitchen,” he tells her, holding out the carefully wrapped food.

She can smell the toasted bread before she even lifts one corner of the napkin and greedily hurries to find the grilled cheese he brought her. When she opens her mouth to thank him, he produces a bag from behind his back, looped over his hook. She reaches out and slides the plastic from the metal, almost nostalgic to see that instead of the faux flesh hand that he’s been wearing in preparation for the performance.

Her own thoughts cut short when the smell of the onion rings reaches her nose and she damn near tells him she loves him. She doesn’t, not yet, not right now, but it’s a close thing when he’s bringing her food and standing in the doorway looking so good. Something about her willingness to say it to Killian, the man she’s been dancing with for a month and a half but sleeping with for less than a week, should tell her that this is different than anything else she’s experienced. For now, she ignores that fact in place of her mostly empty stomach.

The campgrounds are still active, so they both accept that they can’t even so much as kiss each other in greeting. Instead, they drop down to the floor next to the mirrors, and while Emma eats they tell each other stories about their lives in Boston. They keep music playing in the background almost out of habit from the first several weeks they spent together.  
“I have good news to share,” Emma says when the food is gone and he’s helping her back to her feet. As habit, they walk through a couple steps. “But I’ll share it later if you’ll be stopping by?” She asks, because although he’s spent more nights with her than at his own cabin, she doesn’t want to overstep and assume he’ll be there again tonight. She also wants to invite him to the idea that he’s welcome any night he chooses, because the idea of sleeping without him is starting to feel weird.

“I’ll be there,” he tells her quietly, giving her a quick dip and chuckling at her noise of surprise.

When he brings her back up, Emma can see someone on the walkway leading to the studio so she straightens. “Hey, dance,” she tells him in a hurry, and Killian automatically mirrors her hold. They pick up a random spot in the choreography that just barely matches the song that happens to be playing, so that when the door opens and she turns to greet the newcomer, it all looks as natural as they can make it.

“Can I help you?” Emma calls out as Killian stares at their feet and pretends to struggle for a moment.

“I’ve heard great things about the dance program here,” a man says from the entrance.

Emma looks closer to see that it’s a man that’s come to camp before, one that Emma sincerely hoped wouldn’t be back again this year. Thanks to what she views as the unfortunate last name of “Nottingham” he likes to be called The Sheriff, despite not having any ties to law enforcement. There was an incident last year with inappropriate code of conduct, and she really _thought_ David said he wouldn’t be allowed back. Which means he likely appealed to Snow’s sense of second chances and wormed his way back.

And now he’s standing in her studio, leering at her figure before Killian suddenly turns them so he’s nearly shielding her. “Whoops,” he mutters, half-heartedly and with a wink only she can see, but she’s more impressed by how easily he’s able to read her emotions. Then again, he kind of always had the ability to do that.

“I’m in the middle of a lesson right now,” Emma says, only leaning enough to see over Killian’s shoulder and still giving the best smile she can muster up. “My partner has a group class tomorrow at noon if you’re interested in learning some basics.”

“I’ve dabbled in some classes over the years,” he drawls, looking almost bored as he glances around the studio space.

“Of course he has,” Killian says under his breath, still doing remarkably well at looking like he’s a beginner.

“I was thinking something more along the lines of one on one instruction,” Keith continues.

Killian tenses, and Emma tightens her hand in his so he won’t say or do anything stupid. She needs to cut this guy off now and get him out of here before this becomes a _thing_.

“You can sign up on the scheduling computers in the main lodge. My available times will show up as the green blocks. For now, I’d like to devote my attention to my current lesson,” Emma says, very pointedly turning so she can fix the guy with a look that brooks no argument.

“I can only hope I’ll be so dutifully attended to in our class,” he says, his smile spreading slow and sleazy as Emma can _feel_ Killian’s hackles rising. She forces one polite smile again in dismissal and breathes a sigh of relief when the intrusion is over and the path is all clear. Only then does she sag against Killian, resting her head against his chest as she fights to even out her breathing to match his.

“I can sit here and keep an eye on him, if you’d like,” Killian says after a minute. His heart is still pounding from what she can tell but he’s no longer quite as tense as he was.

“You can’t. I’ll get Ruby to be here. Hell, I’ll insist we have our lesson in the main lodge if I have to. But it can’t be you. Besides, nobody saves me but me.”

Finally, Killian sighs, his body relaxing against hers. He wraps his arms around her and presses his lips against her temple. “Aye, so I’ve seen.”

It turns out, she has no one there when the lesson begins. Because he books the very first lesson spot she has available the next day. She’s groggy and barely functioning as she unlocks the studio, only to find Keith entirely too close behind her as she tries to convince the key to work. Maybe she would’ve noticed him sooner if she and Killian hadn’t spent a little too long celebrating the news about the Mills Regency the night before.

She shoots off a text to Ruby, praying the service will actually function in her favor for once. Then, as she would for any other client, she puts on her professional smile and does her job.

“So how much do you charge for a little _extra_ instruction?”

It’s been less than three minutes. All they’ve done so far is review the basic steps for a waltz and she’s explained how they’ll add in some flourishes, and he’s already propositioning her.

“If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, I don’t provide those services.”

“No, no, of course not. I just meant if I wanted to see you _after hours_.”

“Again, that’s a no.”

He gives some noncommittal noise at that, following her instructions (and poorly, she might add) for a couple more minutes. And then his hands start wandering.

“Sorry I’m late!” Ruby’s voice booms through the studio as she barrels up the steps. “How’s it going? Oh _geez_ , who taught you that _form_?” She asks, aghast. He _had been_ in better form, but because he’d stooped to try palming her ass, he was a little out of shape.

As soon as she gets the chance, Emma mouths a thanks to Ruby when Keith can’t see. Much like Killian did, she winks when he isn’t looking and starts calling out extra directions, eventually taking him aside and physically putting his limbs into the proper placement until Emma can step back into it.

By the time the hour is up, Emma and Ruby are both trying to hide their exhaustion. This has been one of the worst lessons either of them have ever done, and Emma has lost count of how many sexual advances he’s lobbed at either one of them. If his hands had strayed again, she would’ve gone straight to her brother with an actual complaint to file, but mostly he was just obnoxious when it’s all said and done.

“Thanks so much for stopping in, Keith. Hope you enjoy the rest of the week,” Emma says, her smile and voice so falsely bright that he has to see and hear it. He still tries to linger, maybe hoping Ruby will leave, maybe hoping he can talk them _both_ into some “extra lessons,” but either way, she and Ruby turn towards the stereo and start talking about the rest of the schedule they’ve got lined up for the day. When he _finally_ leaves, they both let out explosive sighs of relief, and they both sag to the floor.

“You’ve gotta go to David with that shit,” Ruby says with a groan. “I really thought his borderline exposure to Belle last year would’ve been enough to keep him out. How does he keep coming back?”

“Snow believes there’s good in everyone. Maybe if she hears it from both of us she’ll finally stop letting him in. I don’t care if he _does_ pay for two weeks while he stays for one. I’m done with that shit.”

“We are _all_ done with that shit,” Ruby echoes, and they make plans to go at lunch to talk to her brother and sister-in-law.

But when lunch comes around, they both get caught up in other things. Emma helps Tink with a quick set-up and stretch while she deals with a scheduling issue and Ruby is stuck waiting for Victor to see a guest patient before she can talk to him about her final clearance.

The next day fades into the next, and because she’s managed to dodge having any other open classes, Emma forgets about it for the time being. It’s a non-issue. It’s something she can talk to the Nolans about when the summer is over and the four of them can sit down to discuss the whole situation. Besides, she has to also tell them about the new contract she and Ruby will end up signing, and the fact that they have officially decided to uproot and move to Portland.

She’s put it so far out of her mind that, by the time Henry delivers a message that David and Snow want to talk to her a week and a half later, she’s surprised; she wonders if Ruby had a chance to pass along some of that information and didn’t tell her. There’s only two weeks of regular camp activities left. Labor Day weekend endcaps the summer with the final performances. She and Ruby have started on a new dance, ready and excited to share it with the whole camp.

More than that, just a little over three weeks from now, she won’t have to sneak around with Killian anymore. Even though she’s moving, there’s still a chance this could be something more. They haven’t talked about it, but it easily could be. She just needs to make it through this last couple weeks and then they’ll figure it _all_ out. Perhaps if she wasn’t so hyper-focused on all of that, she would’ve felt that uneasy sensation in her stomach as she made her way across camp to the Owners’ Cabin. Instead, she walks in with a skip in her step and a big smile on her face.

It’s a Saturday, and with fewer lessons popping up on her schedule every day, she has more time to finalize the closing number with Ruby and more time to spend with Killian. She’s just about to call out a bright greeting to the occupants when she sees them already waiting for her. Their faces, if she was forced to describe the expressions, are grim – maybe just as grim as when she ran away with Neal. Maybe just as grim as when they buried Ruth. This time, however, it’s directed _at_ her.

“Emma, we received a tip that you’re… seeing Killian. Intimately.” David looks decidedly uncomfortable, and she can’t tell if it’s because of the subject, or him imagining his little sister with a man. As if he still thinks of her as a virginal sanctuary.

The smile immediately drops off her face as she takes in the information. Before she confirms or denies anything, she has to know one thing. “Was it that Keith guy? Because he low-key sexually harassed me for almost the entire lesson I gave him. Ruby can vouch for me on this. There was almost an unwanted ass grab.”

“That’s not the… well, yes. Okay. It was him. But he also showed us a picture of Killian leaving your cabin one morning,” Snow says as gently as she can. “And you’re kissing him.”

Any hopes she had of finding a way to talk herself out of trouble are gone with that revelation. She needs to redirect, and fast.

“I haven’t – I haven’t been this happy since Neal left me in a holding cell in Tallahassee,” she admits, hoping it will count for something. “I’m sorry it’s breaking your rules but I will _not_ apologize for the way I feel.”

“You know we have to stick to these guidelines, even if you’re my sister. I’m sorry, Emma, but we have to suspend you. You’re still on for your final act, but we’ve called Granny and set up a room for you at the inn until then.”

She was being kicked out? As in, _kicked out_ kicked out?

Opening her mouth to say something, she realizes she has nothing. Snow reaches for her hand but she snatches it back quickly. _“No_ ,” she stresses. Backing away towards the door again. “I promised I would never throw this back at you but I want to _remind_ you that you were the original rule breakers. _You_ were the ones Ruth caught having sex in the boat house. You _are_ the reason that rule exists.”

She points at both of them as she hurls the accusation, knowing that it was something she always swore she would never speak of again. For a long time, it was easy, and it was easily smoothed over because she came back with her own baggage and sob story and everyone brushed that thought to the side. Snow had turned 18 three months before Emma did, but she was accompanying a foster outreach program, much like Emma had been a part of all those years ago. She was technically a guest, and David was a senior counselor at that point. But all of this had been locked down as the “family secret” and never spoken of again.

Until today, of course.

Snow looks genuinely wounded by the words, and David looks like some combination of ashamed and angry, but she doesn’t let them say anything else. They’ve already made up their minds and for all of Snow’s “second chance” and “hope” speeches, this is technically Emma’s second chance; she used up the first when she left with Neal a month before she officially turned legal and they didn’t call the cops. They left straight from camp and didn’t stop until the gas ran out, and only then did she contact her family to let them know where she went. That was Emma’s first strike.

Pushing through the door, she doesn’t turn when they both call her name again, and she just starts walking. There’s a part of her that recognizes that she’s moping through the camp, but mostly she moves on autopilot until she’s knocking on the door to Killian’s cabin.

Liam is the one to answer, and he has a smug grin on his face like he knows why she’s here until he sees the expression on hers.

“I need to talk to Killian. Do you think you could give us some privacy?”

“Of course, lass. Is everything okay?”

Just like Killian said, he is _such_ an older brother, and she holds back tears as she tries to decide whether she should shake or nod her head. She just kind of shrugs, instead, which Liam takes in stride as he calls into the cabin for Killian before pushing his way out the door and holding it open for her. He places a tentative hand on her shoulder, giving her some kind of look that might be for reassurance but just makes her feel worse. Just as the door swings shut behind her, Killian exits his bedroom. As soon as he sees her, his eyebrows draw down and he reaches out for her.

“What’s wrong, Swan?”

“I have to leave.”

There it is, out in the open, and her stomach finally drops just as the tears finally start to fall. She can’t cry in front of him. Can’t say goodbye like it means so much more than she meant it to. Because she’ll go back to her corner and he’ll go back to his, because that’s how this goes, right? They never figured it out beyond the now, so maybe this is a sign that this is how it ends. She doesn’t get to keep the good things, or the people she loves deepest. And how the fuck did she end up falling in _love_ with him? When did that happen?

So she kisses him, she kisses him as hard as she can, telling him everything he means to her without saying the words - being too afraid to say them, primarily – and then she repeats it.

“I have to leave. I can’t – I can’t thank you enough, Killian. For everything. Goodbye.”

“Swan?” His voice is a tinge desperate, and he reaches out for her hand again when she moves away but when she flinches from it, he immediately stops. He always was really good at following her lead, after all. When she reaches for the door, he tries one last time. “Emma?”

It stops her this time, the way he says her name, like he’s questioning their entire time together, and she can’t ruin that. She can’t let him walk away from this without knowing it was all real: the weeks of dance instruction, the three weeks of being together, all of it. So she turns around and walks back to him, grabbing his hand and placing it against her heart. She forces a weak smile onto her trembling lips. “I love you,” she tells him, touching her forehead to his and absorbing the way she feels to accompany every lonely night she’ll have after this moment as she tries to figure out what to do next. Because he _does_ deserve to know. He’s too stunned to stop her this time as she turns again and leaves.

Emma at least makes it back to her cabin before she breaks down.

Within an hour, she’s packed what she absolutely needs and leaves a note in the studio for Ruby with her camp key ring tucked inside. Her friend can handle it; she’s a phenomenal solo dancer and naturally draws the audience in, anyway. She’ll know Emma didn’t abandon her. And she’ll understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of y'all will be thankful for me today. XD   
> Chapter 8 is only a few days away! Only two more chapters left!!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Emma's leaving finally comes to light, and everyone find a different way to cope.

Honestly, he could be standing in the same spot for hours or days, all he knows is that time passes and he’s unable to move from the spot where Emma told him all in one swoop that she loves him, _loves him_ , and that she’s _leaving_.

True, they hadn’t talked about what came next or what happens after camp ended but he had honestly _thought…_

 _Thought what, you dumb wanker?_ _That you’d not only get the best thing that’s ever happened to you, but that you’d also get to keep it?_

He’s not even fully aware of Liam coming back until his brother’s hand is on his shoulder and Liam’s face is right up there in his own repeating his name with a worried look on his face.

“What’s happened?”

“She’s leaving, she… I’ve got to stop her.” As if moving in slow motion, Killian wills his body to move towards the door. He has to get to her cabin. He has to stop her.

“Why is she leaving? Killian, wait. Why is she leaving?”

“She didn’t – she didn’t say. Just told me she was leaving, and that she loved me. I have to stop her.”

“Killian, you can’t go there. Something must’ve happened with the owners, and if that’s the case, you need to not be in the middle of it. I’m going to try to head this off and make sure they don’t eject you, or both of us,” Liam says, grabbing his phone and checking the phone numbers by the door.

“A man unwilling to fight for what he wants deserves what he gets,” Killian says before Liam can even start punching in numbers, and his brother stops in his tracks. It’s a motto they’ve always stuck by in their lives, from when they were younger and onward. It’s what Liam tried to tell Killian day after day after his accident, trying to inspire some kind of action in him.

“Ah, of course. Go figure you finally start fighting back at the exact moment we shouldn’t.” There’s no malice behind the words, and Liam is smiling when he turns back to Killian.

“We could get kicked out,” Killian reminds him.

“Aye, we could.”

“I wouldn’t risk our time here for someone I saw as loot,” Killian reiterates, just in case Liam still thinks this is a roll in the sheets for him.

“Little brother, I knew it wasn’t the night you came back from that dance performance. You already loved her, even if you didn’t want to admit it yet. It was all over your face when I saw you walking down the steps towards us.”

“Bloody hell.” He thinks about refuting it, but really, what’s the point when even he knows it’s the truth?

“Go on then,” Liam says, gesturing to the door with a nod of his head.

Killian gives him a tight smile and moves to leave the cabin, but it’s at that exact moment that Henry walks up with a cheery smile on his face.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Jones. I have a message from the owners that they’re on their way. I was already on this side of camp so they asked me to confirm you were at your cabin and they’ll be here shortly. Can I run to the lodge to fetch you lunch or anything while you wait?”

His stomach drops. Not only is he not prepared for this confrontation, he’s worried that the longer he’s delayed, the likelihood Emma will be gone, and he needs to get to her _now_.

“That’s not… no. Thanks, Henry. Did they specify we both had to be here?”

“They didn’t really say? Just said to say they’d be dropping by. Is everything okay, Mr. Jones?”

“It’s fine, lad. Thank you.” He waves the young man off, turning and heading back into the cabin with a defeated look on his face.

“I have no doubt you could take them on your own, Killian. But I’d rather be by your side for it. Otherwise, I’d go stall her until you could get there. We both know they’re looking for you.”

“Aye,” Killian sighs out, his hand twitching as he longs to pour himself a drink. It’s through sheer will that he doesn’t, but he does grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and chug half of it down before the knock sounds on the door.

He stands far from the door when the Nolans walk in, what with their mixed expressions. The wife, Snow, has a grim smile that looks like pity and disappointment all rolled into one. David, however, looks like he’s looking at the guy that was sleeping with his sister/dance instructor. He swallows hard, trying to stand straight and instill confidence into the situation.

 “It’s so nice to officially meet you, even under these circumstances,” Snow says, holding out her hand to Liam first, and then Killian. He shakes her hand, trying to keep his expression as guarded as possible. “I’m sure you know why we’re here. I just wanted to say that for the moment, we’re not sending you out of camp. I am, as I’m sure my husband will agree, an eternal optimist. I like to believe there’s good in everyone, and that every mistake deserves a second chance. That said,” she starts, but David is the one that finishes it.

“That said, if we find any more of your conduct has overstepped the boundaries we set at this camp, then you will be asked to leave.”

Snow gives her husband an obvious look before giving the Jones brothers a smile a little brighter than when they entered. “We can see by our scheduling records that the summer has been quite productive and enjoyable.”

“Maybe a little _too_ enjoyable.”

“David! Ignore him, please. It’s been a rough day for us, as you might imagine. What I meant to say was that it looks like the summer activities have been beneficial for you both and we’re glad you decided to spend your summer here. We also hope you’ll join us for the events we have planned for the final day before you leave.” With a look he can only call encouraging, Snow reaches for David’s hand and (even though it takes an extra pull) leads him from the cabin.

That’s it. No final axe, sure, but certainly no invitation back for the following summer. He hears their cart pull away from the cabin and waits, looking to Liam to see that his brother still supports his decision.

“Go, quickly. See if you can catch her. If it means we leave tonight, so be it.”

He has to wait until their cart turns to the right, heading back into the camp proper before he dashes out, sprinting as if his life depends on it. For the length of the run across the camp grounds, he has hope that Emma will still be there. That he can catch her before she leaves to go wherever she’s going. For goodness sake, he doesn’t even have her phone number. Why didn’t he get that at some point? He has photos of them together, but not a contact spot for her.

His hopefulness dries up when he gets to the cabin, however. The door is locked up tight, and he can even _feel_ that it’s empty. He knocks anyway, hoping for her to come to the door, hoping to see her in one of his t-shirts with a smile on her face and happiness in her eyes. He gives it another minute before he gives up, wandering back down the path to the dance studio and taking a chance that it’s unlocked.

It is, but here, too, there’s emptiness lingering. There’s an envelope on top of the stereo addressed to Ruby, but he doesn’t touch it. Just slumps down to sit by the mirrors where he and Emma regularly sat to each their meals. He sits and collects his thoughts, his breath from the frenzied search, his emotions…

“Shit, she’s really gone, isn’t she?”

He peels open his eyes to see Ruby moving up the stairs. He gestures to the stereo to the envelope and she moves swiftly to grab it. Killian closes his eyes again, listening to the sounds of Ruby ripping the paper open, then her quiet curses as she reads whatever was left behind. When she’s read the contents and grabbed the keyring Killian is very familiar with, she walks over and settles beside him.

“Maybe she just went to Storybrooke to cool off. I heard they only suspended her from the rest of camp but that she was still supposed to dance in the closing night performances.”

“Lass, you and I both know she wouldn’t accept that.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ll still call Granny later and see if she checked in. Just in case. You okay?”

“Not really.”

Ruby just nods at this, leaning her head against the mirror behind her as she regards the empty space. “I haven’t had to experience camp without Emma since Neal happened. Did she tell you how they found out?”

He shakes his head, because bloody hell, she hadn’t even fully explained that they did. They only talked briefly about the bad stuff, Neal and Milah’s passing included. But even with the sparse details, Killian knows that Emma regards that as a summer of regret. “I can’t imagine being here without her.”

She reaches over, squeezing his forearm once before her hand drops back to the floor. They sit in silence for a while after that, neither caring much about the time that passes when they both feel the absence of Emma in the room.

When he gets back to his cabin, Liam is sitting on the front steps just waiting. Despite seeing how Killian’s whole stature sags, he still rises and asks. “Well?”

“She was already gone.”

“Killian,” Liam starts, a sigh heavy on the name. “I _am_ sorry. Maybe we can ask the other instructor if she has Emma’s number. Or even Tink – from what I’m to understand they’ve been friendly before.”

“If she wanted to keep in touch with me, she would’ve made it possible. Let’s just… get through the summer. We’ve paid for this. Might as well try to make the best of it.”

“I can-“

“Thank you, Liam. But no. I’ll try harder tomorrow, but for today, I’m going back to bed.”

He doesn’t hear Liam’s response to that, moving on auto-pilot through the cabin and into his room, shutting the door firmly behind himself.

For the next couple days, the best way to describe his behavior is “moping.”

He stays far from the main lodge, mostly because he doesn’t want to interact with anyone else. But also because he fears that he’ll catch David, who has a tendency to mingle there during meals when he has the time, and that he’ll get the absolute shite kicked out of him for sleeping with the man’s sister.

Just at the thought, his heart pangs painfully. He’s not heard from Emma at all. Ruby let him know that she never checked into her grandmother’s bed and breakfast, which means she went all the way home to Boston. He hasn’t asked Ruby for Emma’s phone number, though Ruby swears she left his in a voicemail she left the day after Emma’s departure. If she wanted to be in contact with him, she would’ve made that effort. He’s decided to respect her wishes and just push through the last of camp like it began, like he told Liam.

Except, every time he tries to pour himself a drink, he stops. He stops, he stares at it, and – inevitably, although Old Killian would’ve screamed murder at it – he pours the drink down the drain. It takes him a while but he finds his flask, and as a security blanket of sorts, he slips it into his pockets. As he sits by the water or hides in his room, he pulls it out and holds it, remembering that at the start of all of this he was heading quickly down the path of an alcoholic. And now, he’s sure he could have a drink with his brother, or take a shot on a night out, but he has no desire to return to who he was when he arrived at Camp Hope.

As if to materialize everything that the summer beheld, Killian finds a permanent marker in one of the drawers and scribbles a few words on the outside. If he could say it to Emma, he would, but this will have to do.

He finds himself back at the dance studio just a handful of days before the final activities. It’s not empty this time; Ruby is already there looking frustrated and tired.

“Sorry, love. Send me away if you wish but I just…”

“No, no. Stay. I’m just… I can’t get anything to work. I don’t like the way it looks by myself.” With a huff of agitation, Ruby turns down the music and goes for her towel and water bottle.

He has no response so he sits down on the top step, angled to face into the room while Ruby resets everything.

“I’m sick of working on this,” she declares after another minute, chucking her towel to the floor and dejectedly coming to sit by him. “How’re you holding up?”

“Poorly.”

“Yeah. Same.” She’s silent for a couple minutes, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her chin on top of them. “Hey, you wanna dance?”

Killian chuckles, a soft thing barely under his breath, but still there. A couple months ago, the very thought scared him beyond reason. Now, his body almost misses the movements. He’d noticed marked improvement in his fitness because of the dance lessons, and he hasn’t felt this good in ages.

“Aye. Sure. You’ve can work with this?” He gestures to his prosthetic.

“Yep!” She bounces up, going to pull up the song he and Emma practiced to so many, many times. As he’s done so many times, he goes over to the one storage cupboard and finds the shoes designated for practicing. He changes into them and starts stretching, following the routines he didn’t realize he’d grown fond of until this moment. He places his empty flask on the floor by the mirrors before standing and facing Ruby who’s just finishing her own stretches.

It feels different dancing with Ruby. She’s taller than Emma, her body a different shape, and Ruby doesn’t have the built in knowledge of how to handle Killian’s prosthetic, but she adapts when necessary. It’s similar and yet entirely different, but by the end of the dance they’re both at least smiling again.

“You miss her a lot?” Ruby asks, going and fetching two fresh bottles of water for them as the next song starts playing.

“More than I might be able to put into words,” he divulges.

“You should dance with me at the final show.”

“Lass that’s-“

“A great idea. Think of how it would look to David and Snow if they could see what Emma actually did in the time you spent together. You’re practically the embodiment of the whole damn camp motto right now.”

Killian still hedges, because dancing for some faceless audience is one thing, but dancing for the camp feels like a beast of a different nature.

“You don’t have to wear the costume. Just throw on something that looks good and you can change into your performance shoes before we dance. I have them stashed with the other gear in here. They were uh, left behind. I finally went and packed everything up.”

He looks at her, then. And he sees her missing her friend as much as he misses the woman he fell in love with despite never expecting to. He sighs, his shoulders sagging in defeat. “Fine. I suppose it’ll be nice to have something to show for the whole thing, aye?”

“That’s the spirit! Come back tomorrow and we’ll run it again, just to be safe.”

After agreeing on a time, he changes back into his shoes and heads out, slightly lighter than when he entered just a short bit ago.

He doesn’t notice the absence of his flask, having grown so accustomed to not carrying it anyway. But Ruby flips it over and over again in her hands, a plan quickly developing as Killian’s form disappears down the walkway.

-x-

After another salty day at the studio, Emma returns to an apartment that is just as lonely as she is. The drive home was quiet, the apartment has been quiet, her phone has been (mostly) quiet, and she hates all of it. She could’ve gone to Granny’s and stayed until the closing weekend was over, but she couldn’t be that close to something she didn’t even know she wanted without being able to have it.

It was one part self-preservation and one part running away.

Not only did she go all the way home, she forgot to even give her number to Killian. What was supposed to be the first thing she did one night ended up being a complete oversight. And sure, she can tell Ruby to give it to him, but she’s dodged all of her friend’s calls and texts lately. There are at least three unopened voicemails on her phone. She’s mostly trying to just lay low until everything blows over.

Unfortunately, she’s doing a poor job of coping. The day after she got back, she contacted Graham and let him know she’d be taking back her studio space, and contacted a few of her regular clients that might be ready to start lessons again.

She’s started the list of everything that will need to be done to prepare for the job in Portland but she hasn’t acted on any of it. All of her plans now feel in limbo. The whole point of taking on the Portland job was to be closer to her brother and sister-in-law. Will they even want her close now? Sure, they’re family, but what comes next?

Rather than deal with the headache of it all, she decides that she’ll wait for Ruby to come home so they can handle it all together.

When she gets home from her lesson of the day, she changes immediately into a t-shirt she really didn’t _mean_ to steal from Killian and sleep shorts before collapsing onto the couch. His shirt is the only thing she’s really unpacked, leaving everything else in her massive suitcase, or spilling out of it as it seems to be doing.

Her performance dress is hanging from the coatrack, left there from when she hauled everything inside after she got in. She hasn’t pulled the garment bag off of it, because this time she knows it’s her dress; she has no reason to hope that Killian will show up with the bag and that knowing smile he loved to give her when he appeared late at night, waiting to be invited in.

Maybe she should get ahold of Ruby. Even if the cell reception at camp isn’t too great, it’s as easy as using a process of telephone with Granny.

She feels lost and confused, the most she’s been since she stumbled back home after Neal’s betrayal, hoping to every god that would listen that her family would accept her back with open arms. And it feels like that all over again. Because all she wants is for Snow and David to forgive her, but given their start, she can’t get over her anger. They were barely legal when that happened, and Ruth had actual reason to be upset with them because it was still a camp intended for young adults and children.

Camp Hope as it stands now is decidedly less innocent. That much can be said from staff dances alone, but also by the fact that condoms are on the grocery kiosk list. Guests are always sleeping together. They’re adults; they’re allowed to have whatever fun they choose. It’s not like she and Killian were having sex out in the open. The fact that Keith got a picture of Killian leaving _her cabin_ meant he had to be pretty far off the path to the studio. He always left before the sun was even up, which makes the whole thing even worse.

Yet, despite those facts adding up, David and Snow don’t see anything wrong with Keith’s peeping Tom activities, but at the fact that she was having a completely consensual relationship with a grown man out of the public eye of the camp.

She realizes belatedly that she’s absolutely destroying the take-out menu she’d picked up off the kitchen counter before going to the couch and throws the scraps onto the coffee table. Lifting one of the pillows, she screams into it as hard as she can, hoping it’ll help loosen up the rage that’s built up again.

This issue isn’t over. Even if she doesn’t get to see Killian again – as it seems clear as day that it would only cause more problems if she kept seeing him after what happened – then she and David are going to have this out in whatever way they have to. She can only promise to stay calm as long as she can.

Fuck takeout, she decides, and goes to throw one of their frozen bagels into the toaster.

As it toasts away, all she can think about is Killian. She _misses_ him. She didn’t know it was possible to miss someone so much after knowing them that short a period of time. She buries her face in her hands while she waits, contemplating all her options, until she realizes that several minutes have passed and she doesn’t smell even a hint of toasty goodness.

She looks up, glaring at the toaster before ripping the cord from the wall and prying her still-frozen bagel from its clutches.

What happens next is entirely out of her control and in no way her fault, or so she will tell Ruby when she surveys the toaster guts scattered across the counter and floor. In the end, the toaster, the bagel, and her dignity all end up in the trash and she ends up soaking in a bath.

The day of final performances, she has every intention of hibernating in her apartment, but the buzzer calls to her instead, and she’s letting up someone to hand her an overnight delivery. She smiles at Ruby’s handwriting, wondering what she thought was too vital to wait just a few more days.

When she opens the box, there’s an envelope waiting on top of something small that’s wrapped in tissue paper. Again, the handwriting is Ruby’s. She tears it open, scanning the words on the page.

_Emma –_

_I don’t know the full story, because David only scowls when I ask and Snow is avoiding me, but I sure do miss you already. When you didn’t show at Granny’s, I figured you stuck to your word and went all the way back to Boston. I kept stumbling across this cute guy, though, and I may have gotten him to agree to dance with me for the final number. He’s a good egg, this one. I swiped this from him. Thought you might find it interesting. Say hi to Cap and Thor for me. Miss you bunches!_

_Ruby_

With a half-smile, she sets Ruby’s letter to the side and pulls out the tissue paper. Almost immediately, she can recognize it by shape, but she takes care to unwrap it, letting the paper fall to the table as she turns his flask over in her hands. Unlike the first time she saw it, it’s completely empty and dry, and there’s a message scrawled on the side.

_I miss you more than I’ll ever miss drinking._

There’s even a little swan outline done in the same quick strokes beneath the words, and she finds herself breathing hard. The words wash through her, effectively bringing back every single moment they spent together, not only in her cabin but all the time they spent practicing. They weren’t some quick, one-time thing. They were a carefully cultivated partnership that developed over the course of several weeks, probably too many hours, and countless displays of trust and honesty.

She shakes her head, carefully setting the flask down on the table as she considers it. As if she really had a choice.

Without more than a second of hesitation, she stands from the couch and heads to her room, immediately grabbing her overnight bag and the essentials to last for a couple days, just in case. She sends a quick text to her neighbor to watch over the fish once again and grabs the garment bag off the coat rack on her way out the door.

The entire way, the whole four hours, she practices what she’s going to say when she gets there. She’s still repeating it when she pulls into her usual spot. She grabs her bags and heads to her cabin, not really surprised when she finds her keys hidden in a potted plant next to the door. She changes quickly, thankful that she did manage to shower today even if all she does is pull her hair into a ponytail. After a little makeup and one last check in the mirror, she nods at herself and walks to the main lodge, her performance shoes swinging from her hand.

This late in the day and this late in the summer, everyone who’s left is already likely at the lodge for the final camp ceremonies. She looks up to the placard that hangs above the doorway, thinking of everything Ruth did to create this camp and how it brought her right to this moment. Inside, she gets the same feeling she always does at the end of a summer. She doesn’t know most of the people in the room; most of them never would’ve come to try dancing or didn’t have time. Despite that, this crowd is her family. This camp is her home. And no matter what happens next, those two things will never change.

It takes a few minutes of scanning the room to find him, but there’s Killian in one of the corner seats at a table with Liam. He’s dejectedly pushing around the food on his plate, his expression far away and his left arm tucked under the table in what she now knows is a move of self-preservation. It takes some careful maneuvering between the tables until she can get to him, but she ignores everything and everyone else in her path until she’s able to stop right in front of him. His shock is palpable, but his smile is suddenly blinding, and he takes her hand when she offers it to him.

If he’s unsure about her course, then he doesn’t try to stop her, even when it becomes clear as day that she’s heading straight for the stage where David has just stepped up and is describing everything the camp attendees have done and learned during their stays, whether it was for the whole summer or shorter bursts of time. He trails off when he sees her, his expression turning not to anger (like she almost feared he might be) but to bemusement when he sees Killian behind her.

They make their way up, and Emma makes sure to wave to the audience when David introduces them before he puts the mic back on the stand and moves towards her.

“I have a couple things I want to say,” Emma tells him plainly before he can say a word. He tilts his head to the side, considering her request (demand, really), and then grabs the microphone. With her free hand, Emma takes it from him, which is something she never would’ve done on any other occasion. Dance in front of thousands of strangers? Yes. Talk to them? Hell nope. What’s more surprising, David clears way for her to let her take center stage.

“Um, hi. I’m Emma. Many of you know me as one of the dance instructors. But I’m also a long-term camp resident. I’ve been coming here since I was fifteen, and it’s the best and only consistent thing I’ve ever had in my life.” She looks at David after she says this, so that he knows without a doubt. Then she looks at Killian, who is still reassuringly holding her hand and standing by her side despite the fact that she just dragged him up here.

“It’s all right,” he mouths, nodding in encouragement as if he already knows what she’s about to say.

“The night I met Killian, he was so drunk he couldn’t even stand on his own without support. He also threw up on me, but I’m just saying that because I think it finally makes us even.” He throws back his head and laughs at that, his eyes shining with mirth. “I asked for his help when I needed a dance partner willing and able to learn a professional routine, and he was there. He sobered up entirely without me even asking, and he danced better than any other student I’ve ever had before.”

Looking out at the room, she sees faces she recognizes from their years of attendance, and new faces entirely. She takes a quick breath before continuing. “Ruth created this place as a way for people to connect and find themselves. That’s exactly what happened. And yeah, sure, maybe trying to sneak a relationship behind your brother’s back is a bad idea. And no, there shouldn’t be rampant sex between _anyone_ here, but we’re adults. This is a natural progression of something becoming a relationship. This is the purest example of two people connecting over a _very_ respectable length of time before this became something more.” The last part is directed, again, at her brother with her finger raised to make the point. This is everything she should’ve said to them in their cabin that day.

“I found myself,” Emma says, more to David and Snow than the audience. “And I know that’s something you’ve always wanted for me. And Killian,” she says, turning to look at him. “He found himself, too. And I know the rules, and we went about this in a way that you don’t approve, but this is one time I have to punch back and remind you that this is what healing looks like. This place is the closest thing to a fairy godmother most of us are ever going to find. Maybe I can’t convince you with words, so maybe I can show you that this is what Camp Hope is all about.”

When she holds out the microphone, it takes just a second before David takes it from her. He and Snow both smile in a way she knows all too well, clearing the stage as Emma moves to the sound tech with her song choice. She’d set her shoes down on the edge of the stage when they walked up so she goes to retrieve those, relieved when Killian sits down next to her in the wings to slip on his, as well.

“Quite the speech, Swan.”

“Yeah, well, I finally had something to say.” She gets up when her shoes are secured, standing directly in front of him and waiting until he’s done and looking at her again. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he says immediately, and the way the words sound makes her smile brightly. “Shall we?”

Instead of answering, she takes his hand again and moves to the center of the stage. This is the most relaxed she’s ever been when preparing to perform. When the music starts, they move easily, even with Killian in dark jeans. He throws her little flirtatious smiles as he twirls her, as they come back into their hold and dance the steps they painstakingly worked on day after day. His expression, while he’s still concentrating, morph into the affection she began to recognize somewhere around the time he was laying on a table to have his chest hair waxed off for her.

As their dance ends, the whole audience erupts in applause, and they bow before she pulls him down for a kiss. The staff, she realizes, are cheering the loudest at that, and when she breaks away even David and Snow can’t contain their mirth. David shakes his head, but his smile never falters and he’s clapping right along with the rest of the crowd.

When Emma and Killian leave the stage, David and Snow are right there waiting for them. Snow embraces her, hugging her tightly as David joins in. His hand comes up to cradle the back of her head and she sinks into the touch.

“We’re sorry we didn’t try harder to talk to you about all of this. We’ve held onto these rules for so long, but I think it’s clear that it’s time to reevaluate them and accept that sometimes, the enrichment our guests and staff are here for might not happen the way we expect.”

“And we’d like you to help us outline the new guidelines for next summer, if you would,” David says. “Also, Keith has been banned for repeated violations of sexual harassment, after further investigation. Turns out he was creeping outside a lot of women’s cabins and taking pictures. That’s something we should’ve looking into a lot harder before even talking to you. It was practically dawn when that picture was taken.”

“We can talk about all of this later. And I have some good news, too. I’m moving to Portland, so we’ll have plenty of time to look at those guidelines together. For now, go close down the summer.”

There’s more hugging, of course – she didn’t expect to give them such news without that kind of reaction.  But then she urges them out to keep the show moving along.

By the end of the night, Ruby manages to pull Emma onto the stage with her, the two easily falling into one of their routines and earning a standing ovation from the crowd. As the show moves on to something more interactive, Ruby makes sure to pull her aside and give her a big hug.

“I had a feeling that would work,” she says, her eyes as knowing as ever. “He doesn’t realize I sent the flask. Probably forgot he even left it at the studio when I told him he should perform with me tonight. I had a very strong suspicion he wouldn’t be dancing with _me_.”

“That was a lucky move. Thanks for leaving the keys for me.”

“Again, I had a hunch.”

“It was a good hunch,” she tells her friend, holding her hands in her own before giving her a tight hug. “By the way, we need a new toaster.”

Ruby’s still laughing as Emma makes her way back through the crowd to where Killian and Liam are chatting. He readily hugs her, kissing the side of her head in an easy move and grinning down at her when he’s done.

“So, better than Europe?” she asks, applying gentle pressure with her hand at his waist to start him moving.

“Much. Liam, I hope you’ll excuse us. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Liam halts them briefly to give Emma a hug, a whispered speech of “If you hurt my brother…” in her ear that leaves her smiling because he is _such_ an older brother. And then they’re off, weaving their way through the people to find the exit.

It’s just after midnight when they make it back to Emma’s cabin, leaving before many of the other campers and happy for the distractions so they can slip away unnoticed. Even so, Killian kisses her long and slow outside the door to her cabin without fear of anyone saying anything to them.

He doesn’t sneak out in the morning, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter concludes the main story! The last chapter that will post on Thursday is an epilogue of sorts. I have greatly appreciated every bit of feedback, ever comment, every kudos. It has meant the world to me. Thanks for giving this fic a chance and I hope you enjoyed it!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four months after camp ends, Killian and Emma are finding their new rhythm as a couple and seeing what their futures hold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I set out to write a 1-2k epilogue. So... 5k later y'all got a full chapter instead.

There’s something to be said for having a girlfriend who dances. Emma’s definitely agile, and while she’s incredibly fit she’s still soft in all the right places. By now, Killian knows she sleeps in next to nothing and eats junk food as much as possible, with her snacks as fruits and vegetables in order to mislead people into believing she’s some kind of health nut. These are all things he knew before the summer at Camp Hope ended and life after began.

Thankfully, the list of things he knows about Emma just keeps getting longer.

“Not on the one, darling,” he murmurs against her ear, his hand resting on her stomach with her back against his chest. He tenses his fingers momentarily so she chortles in his hold. She’s ticklish, he’s discovered, and has exploited this fact many times over now. And when she’s not on a deadline, it’s so easy to derail any kind of attempt at dance rehearsals.

This studio is different than the one at camp. For one, there’s no issue with the heating and air conditioning, which is good considering it’s been snowing for three and a half days and shows no signs of stopping. But they’re cozy inside the studio space with hours to spare thanks to it being so close to the holidays.

Another difference in the studios is that this one is downstairs from Emma and Ruby’s apartment. The living space had come first, when they’d found the perfect apartment with just the right amount of space and the perfect price tag.

Downstairs, there’d been an empty retail rental big enough to be a studio. It had taken time, and some help from David and Snow (their way of making amends for what they later claimed was a huge oversight in their judgement), but they’re preparing to do a Grand Opening ceremony in two weeks to mark the official start of business. They’ve taken on a few private clients, but soon they’ll have classes and lessons of all kinds. They’ve even found a couple more teachers interested in employment.

With the two women on holiday break from the hotel’s entertainment schedule, Ruby drove up to Storybrooke to spend some time with Granny and Mulan. Already, she’s been able to go see her family and girlfriend more than expected since moving out of Boston.

That leaves the apartment free for Emma and Killian to spend their own time together. Today, with the snow continuing to thwart any plans they may have made, they’re down in the studio. The front of the building is all windows, and looks in at the space where Ruby or Emma will hold classes for groups of people. There are two slightly smaller spaces, however, and one of them is windowless, a line of mirrors against one wall, and a solid door so no one can peek in.

It’s not that anyone would be doing so today, of all days. Again, with the studio closed and the place to themselves, there’s no chance anyone will walk in on them. That’s a good thing, too, when Emma promptly abandons the steps to slide down Killian’s body, taking his sweatpants down as she goes. Thankfully, they’re near enough the wall that he leans forward, bracing his left forearm on the mirrored surface and reaching down to rest his hand on the back of her neck just as she engulfs him in one slick slide.

He had no idea the sex could get better, but he’s never claimed to know everything.

Afterwards, when they’re both satisfied and sprawled on the floor, Emma bundles up one of their shirts for Killian to use as a pillow before resting her cheek on his chest. Her breath ruffles the hair that’s slowly growing back, and he feels the way she smiles as she must notice the same thing. With wispy touches, she traces along his chest, around a nipple, and down his stomach. Her body starts shaking with mirth as Killian groans. It’s been five minutes, and yet his body already wants to start again. She’s brilliant at eliciting such a response from him.

“Darling, we need a bed if you wish to go for another round. And water. I need to rehydrate after that.”

She chuckles out loud this time, lifting herself to a sitting position next to him with one hand resting on his stomach. “Good idea. Maybe some food, too. Oh! D’you wanna make pancakes?”

“Whatever your heart desires, love.”

She grins, her eyes crinkling up as she does. Her hair is an absolute tangle, the last of the sweat still drying at her temples, but she looks even more beautiful every time he looks at her. “Come on, sailor.” She stands up, holding out a hand to help him up.

“Now, why does this feel awfully familiar? But I seem to remember being fully clothed the first time we did this.”

At mention of their disastrous first meeting, Emma throws her head back and laughs. He smiles as he watches her, taking in the relaxed stance despite her total lack of clothing. He lines up the images in his mind of that first memory of her hovering over him, her face pinched in annoyance, her lips pursed as she tried to coax him off the ground. How long ago that night feels compared to where they are now.

With one more bracing breath, Killian sits up, taking her offered hand and helping to gather their clothes. They’ll clean later, top to bottom, as they did with the camp studio. For now, however, he wants to make her some hot chocolate and help her with the pancakes. They slide on only what’s necessary, and then Killian sends her on her way up the back entrance while he gathers the rest of their discarded clothing. He pauses before he shuts off the lights, looking at the man that stands in the mirror and smiling. If he could go back to May and let his past self in on the secret, he may have been less reluctant to go to camp, even if it all seems surreal.  

He never figured dancing would become something he did on the side. To his surprise, Regina had followed through with the offer to sign Killian on as a part-time entertainer, even after she learned that he was a total amateur, taught only in the weeks leading up to their performance. Twice now, he’s danced on their performing nights, once with Emma and once with Ruby. They’ve even started teaching him a few new dances that they’ll start using after the New Year begins so he has more than a single Mambo in his repertoire.

It was all a whirlwind after the summer ended at Camp Hope. He and Emma had a week in the city together before she and Ruby began hunting for a new apartment. He helped any way he could, but mostly he was happy to be able to take Emma out on dates after their initial return. When she officially relocated to Portland, he weighed his options for a couple weeks before deciding it was also time for a change of scenery for him.

But instead of moving to Portland with Emma, he went further. One weekend in October before the hotel job officially began, when she was tied up with planning meetings with Ruby and Regina, Killian drove to Storybrooke. He took David and Snow out to dinner, and informed them he wanted to move to town, and that he’d like to offer his services for maintaining the camp.

It was awkward, at first, with David. Somehow, the entire time they talked, Killian was sure the man was going to forbid him from seeing Emma, like Killian was a suitor for David’s princess daughter, but the demand never came. The dinner helped to smooth over the last rough edges from the incident over the summer, and it helped that they got to see how dedicated he was to helping around the camp – that he _intended_ on staying in Emma’s life.

After seeing what Killian could still do as far as repairs and maintenance to the cabins, the tension eased even further. When the spring hits, Killian will go to camp again to help Marco, their lead wood-worker, to make some renovations. He’s discovered that he works wonderfully with the older man, even if his adult son, August, can be a bit much sometimes.

Killian shakes his thoughts free, finally extinguishing the lights and locking up the studio before jogging up the steps. He heads straight to Emma’s room to drop their clothes and tie on his robe, smiling for what feels like the millionth time today when he sees Emma’s missing from the hook.

The pancakes end up taking a little longer than he or Emma intended, primarily because she looks too tempting in her robe, standing there mixing batter as she hums along to whatever song is playing from the radio in the kitchen. He presses up close behind her, finding a spot just above her ear as he inhales.

“Something smells delicious.”

“I haven’t even started cooking them, yet.”

“I’m not talking about the pancakes,” he says, moving forward to nuzzle the side of her face.

Her smile grows, and she spins around to kiss him, then – fiercely and fondly all in the same move – until she breaks away. Her eyes search his face as her hands rub up to his shoulders and back down.

“What?” There’s something there behind her expression, but she doesn’t look sad or upset, so he knows the answer can’t be bad.

“I’m just… happy. Still surprises me sometimes.”

With a sweeping look of his own, he gives her a small smile. “Aye, love. Me too.”

She leans up, then, kissing him again, letting it quickly morph from a tender moment to one filled with passion. She has him backed up against the table in no time, one hurried “To hell with the pancakes,” thrown out for good measure as she takes control of the kiss. Their robes are pushed off to the side, dropped to the floor like their clothes were earlier, and they truly put the kitchen table to the ultimate test of how much weight and activity can take place on top of it without collapsing.

Killian makes a mental note to thoroughly clean the kitchen when they’re done, as well.

With one kind of appetite filled once more, they finally get down to the business of making their _very_ late second breakfast. The rest of the day is spent on the couch in their pajamas, fuzzy blankets wrapped around the both of them as they catch up on whatever is on her Netflix queue.

It’s been six months since they met, and five since things took a turn for romance, but Killian’s mind wanders away to what comes next. It’s those thoughts of the future that follow him into his dreams, and he wonders what kind of ring Emma might like best.

-x-

“Killian’s going to ask me to marry him,” Emma says quietly into her phone. The screeching response is loud to her own ears, so she’s glad she’s sitting in the living room and far away from the man in question, soundly sleeping in her bed.

It takes Ruby just a couple seconds to calm down again before she starts her line of questions. “Wait, did you talk to him about it? How do you know this?”

“So, Killian talks in his sleep. Not often, and most of the time it’s total nonsense, but I was just dozing off last night when he grabbed my hand and asked me what kind of ring I want him to get. Completely asleep, dead to the world, and he just told me he wants to marry me.”

He never talked when they were sleeping together at the camp. It wasn’t until about a month of actually dating him that he first babbled some words at her as she was waking up to make breakfast at his apartment. Last night was the clearest he’s ever spoken to her in his sleep, though, as if the message defied being garbled by sleep.

Once, the very thought of getting married would cause her chest to constrict in panic. Now, however, she has that feeling you get when you’re trying not to laugh while speaking. As it is, she can’t fight the blissful smile stretching across her whole face.

“And what kind of ring should I tell him to get when he asks?”

“His subconscious has already ruined part of the mystery. Let it be a surprise. I trust you to know what I like.”  
“And you’re not freaking out?”  
“You know, I would’ve a couple months ago. Probably right after we slept together I still would’ve run away. But now,” she pauses, trying to think of the best way to describe how she’s feeling. She wants to run, all right, straight down an aisle with Killian waiting for her at the end of it.

“Now it’s just right?” Ruby finishes for her.

“Exactly. Okay. Merry Christmas and all that, in case I don’t talk to you tomorrow. Send my best to Mulan, and tell Granny thanks for the cookies. We have been steadily working our way through them since we opened the package.”

“We already finished ours, honestly. And same to you and Killian. You guys coming up tomorrow or Christmas Day?”

“Tomorrow, as long as the roads are clear. I think the snow was due to stop last night.”

“Good. Drive carefully. Try not to have sex on _everything_.”

“Too late,” Emma says. Chortling as Ruby starts squawking again on the other line. “Okay, bye!” She ends the call before she gets hearing damage in her ear, still chuckling to herself as she stands up from the ball she’d curled up into on the couch. With a long stretch and yawn, Emma makes her way back to the bedroom where Killian is still sleeping.

She tilts her head as she looks at him from the doorway, his face eased of any expression, his breathing soft and even. His brace and prosthetic are sitting on a shelf she installed especially for him, and his hand rests on the spot she vacated in her need to bubble over with her secret just a bit ago.

Once, Emma found Killian sleeping on the side of a trail, and the thought of that shared memory from the day before makes her snort. The noise causes Killian to stir, and he blinks his eyes open to search for her.

“Coming back t’ bed, love?”

“Yeah, be right there,” she tells him, turning once to go use the bathroom and get a glass of water before she curls up with Killian again. She knows that with the late hours they kept the night before and all their _strenuous_ activity, they’re likely to stay in bed all morning if they can. It is Christmas Eve-Eve, and they have nowhere to be today.

There’s still a nervous flutter in her belly as she climbs back into the bed, back into the sleepy embrace Killian bestows upon her after she’s situated under the covers. She rests with her head on his shoulder, his arm loosely wrapped around her back, and thinks about how much life has changed since this time last year. For one, her bed was definitely empty. And for another, her bed was in Boston, her heart locked away, her future uncertain.

Now she’s snuggled to a man that helped her move this bed into this very room, with her heart next to his, and she’s happier than she ever imagined she could be. And now, apparently, he wants to _marry_ her. It takes a lot of effort to not let the giddy laughter erupt once more, and she focuses instead on the other developments that have taken place to get her mind off the elephant in the unconsciousness.

When she moved to Portland, Emma wasn’t sure what was going to happen with her relationship with Killian. They’d barely made it past a third date before she and Ruby signed a lease for this place, so there was a lot she and Killian hadn’t been able to discuss yet. She knew she loved him, and that he loved her. And that alone was a shock, still. Of all things Emma was expecting from camp this year, falling in love in such a short period of time was not one of them.

Though they hadn’t been together long, that didn’t make Emma any less sure of her emotions. She kind of figured when she was willing to invite him to her cabin that night after their performance that it had to be something bigger than a one night stand.

And then came the end of camp. Killian and Liam both stuck around after all the guests checked out to help out any way they could. Killian explained later that he felt he owed it to David and Snow for not decking him on the spot, and he wanted to give them back something for all they gave to him. Even after the studio was cleaned and locked up for the season, and her car packed to the brim with all their gear, he still stuck around.

There were several jobs that Killian was perfectly fit for, given his background in building things, and he helped Leroy make some repairs, helped Marco fix up some of the furniture in a cabin where he hadn’t had time to update it yet, and he helped David with anything the man even hinted at needing help with. Sure, they snarked their way through any and every job they did together, but Emma could see at the end of their clean-up week that David was fighting smiles when Killian made a joke.

When she moved, Killian took the initiative to go make solid amends with her brother and sister-in-law. She was busy with rehearsals for an upcoming show at the hotel, but Killian assured her he would be fine, that he would backtrack and spend the night in Portland with her after dinner was completed. It was still nerve-wracking to wait around for news of that dinner, however. Almost worse than waiting for Regina when she and Ruby went to sign their contracts.

Of course, he surprised her in the best way possible when he told her he was moving to Storybrooke.

“I don’t ever want to make you choose between visiting me, and visiting your family. So I’m moving to where they are. David and Snow have even offered to lease out their old loft to me until I find a place of my own.”

The loft was a first home on their own for all of them, at one point or another. After Ruth passed away and David and Snow moved out to her old farmhouse, no one could see fit to let go of the apartment, so they sublet it during the summer months and kept it, just in case. And now, full circle, Killian was living in it. Because they hadn’t really talked about the future or what comes next between them, he’s just been nestled there until further notice.

It does make it really handy when she has a week off and she can hop up to see the Nolans. She stays with Killian and gets to see everyone for days on end, which is just about the most settled she’s felt since Ruth first took her in.

Killian mumbles in his sleep, turning to press his nose against her forehead, barely kissing the skin before he falls back to sleep once more. Emma wonders if they ever truly relaxed at camp, given how much more comfortable they seem to be now that it’s all said and done. Not that it really matters, since it all worked out, but she wonders what she would’ve done had her family truly banished her. She wouldn’t have let them. She shouldn’t have left like she did – especially without giving Killian a way to contact her – but she would’ve made sure it all worked out this way no matter what.

Her boyfriend’s budding friendship with her family is all just a bonus. As is her own slow-building relationship with Liam. Just as Killian experienced pushback with David, Emma had some problems getting along with Liam right off the bat. She’s pretty sure he was just looking out for Killian, but it took a heated conversation to turn it around. He’d been touting how he waited to start courting Tink until after camp was finished and they had time to get to know each other.

In one instance, it was a lovely lunch at Killian’s apartment in Boston right after she moved to Portland. In the next, the brothers were angrily talking over one another about morals and propriety and she thinks there was something about disrespect? She lost track quickly. She just remembers standing up between the two of them and telling them to _both_ shut the hell up so they could talk it out like adults or take it out back like children.

It took some extra rum and whiskey, and another beer for her, but they hashed it all out that night. Liam is, as she guessed, incredibly protective of his younger brother. And changes had taken place really fast in their lives. She was the force that was taking Killian away from Liam, though she didn’t know that at the time.  When Killian moved, she made a promise to Liam that she would keep on Killian to call and FaceTime with his brother, but she’s never had to remind him once in the last couple months.

It helps that Liam comes up to Storybrooke once or twice a month on the weekends to visit Tink, so that the brothers don’t ever feel truly separated. And it also helps that Liam has seen the full turn-around in Killian from the beginning of the summer. Now, when Killian has a glass of rum, he stops at one. Full bottles are not a rarity anymore. In fact, since he moved, she’s pretty sure the same bottle of rum has been in his liquor stash.

After spending most of the morning doing absolutely nothing, Emma finally shoos Killian out of bed so she can get her laundry done and pack for the week they’re staying in Storybrooke. He helps by cleaning almost the entire apartment while she works on her task, helping to load up her laundry basket when it’s all done and bring it down the hall to her bedroom.

They make dinner together, a simple meal of spaghetti since there’s nothing left in the fridge. They make hot cocoa again after they’ve cleaned up from their meal, settling on the couch to watch Christmas movies until bedtime. She’s a little sad that the apartment is mostly bare of decorations. They put up a few small ones, but no tree this year.

First, neither she nor Ruby will be home to enjoy it on Christmas day, so what was the point. And second, it didn’t fit in the storage space located outside their door, so Emma reluctantly kept it in Storybrooke this year. So while the urge to decorate simmers in her right this very minute, it’s not like she even can. She tides herself over with a reminder that there will be a tree at David and Snow’s place, and she’ll appreciate that one to the fullest.

The drive up the coast is about what Emma was expecting it would be. Enough of the snow has melted down that it’s not treacherous, but it’s not a quick and easy drive, either. Because of this, they end up arriving at the town line about an hour and a half beyond what they were hoping for.

“We’ll just come straight out to the farmhouse,” Emma says to Snow on the phone.

“No, honey, go to the loft and settle in a bit. We can wait. Dinner’s not for hours, still. We understand.”

Even though she protests one more time that she wants to see them, and sooner rather than later, Snow still insists they go do what they need to at the loft first. Maybe if she wasn’t so tired from the constant vigilance on the trip up, she would’ve caught the note in Snow’s voice letting her know something was up.

But because she _is_ that exhausted from the drive, she’s still completely blown away when Killian shoulders open the door to the apartment and they’re greeted with a puff of warm air and the scent of cinnamon instead of the chilled exterior they were expecting to come back to.

The whole place is decorated like Snow and David used to, with lights hanging from the exposed beams and railing of the loft above. The lamps suspended above the breakfast bar have tinsel wrapped around them, and the lights switched to red and green – something that used to absolutely delight Emma when she used to come over around the holidays. The one winter she was living here, they did the same thing, and that’s probably exactly why they did all this now.

“Surprise!” Snow says as she rounds the tree – _Emma’s_ tree – set up in the corner by the bathroom, placing an ornament and sprucing as she goes. Her sister-in-law beams as she looks at Emma’s wonderment, and she finally remembers to close her mouth and push Killian through the door when David snorts from upstairs.

“We thought we’d give you a true Storybrooke welcome,” her brother says as he comes down the stairs, grabbing Emma’s suitcase and moving it to the side so he can shut the door behind the two of them. He helps Emma with her coat, taking Killian’s as well and hanging them on the hooks by the door. Only then does Emma remember how to function, to slip off her snow boots and take off her hat and gloves, stashing them in the appropriate places, only vaguely aware of Killian doing the same beside her.

After that, her only goal is to hug David and Snow. She starts with her brother, as he’s closest, and then to Snow who is painstakingly placing tinsel on the tree, making sure each and every strand looks perfect. “We were going to wait,” Snow explains, opening her arms and accepting the tight hug Emma gives her. “But we also wanted to surprise you once the drive kept getting longer and longer. We had plenty of time.”

There are even two stockings hung from screws in the brick wall, hung with twine so they rest just at the height they’d be at if there was a fireplace and mantel here. Hers is old and worn – the one that Ruth made for her when she first came to live with the Nolans – but Emma can see that the purple thread that spells her name has been refreshed with some glittery yarn accents. And now, one adorned with Killian’s name hangs next to it. She sees that he’s finally moved, as well, his fingers gliding along the delicately embroidered red.

“Look inside,” Snow urges, going to stand with David as the other two stand in awe of their stockings.

Killian casts one glance Emma’s way, lifting his eyebrow in question and she shrugs in response. In unison, they reach into the stockings and pull out small items wrapped in tissue paper. The item from hers feels like fragility, and she’s not mistaken when she unwraps the milky glass of a hand-blown ornament shaped like a swan. It’s likely by someone in town, and Emma makes a mental note to ask who so she can thank them in person, but her gaze is caught by Killian’s ornament.

It’s clearly one made by Marco, the handcrafted carving too detailed and precise to be done by anyone else, and she thinks it’s just a tall ship until Killian laughs once, finding the little pirate flag attached. Clearly, Marco had wheedled Killian’s love of ships and pirates out of her boyfriend at some point during their work together. She imagines he must’ve spent weeks working on this one ornament and adds a second trip to their thank-you-tour for the days following Christmas.

“Thank you,” Emma says as she turns to David and Snow. “For all of this.” She gestures to the apartment in whole, from tree to lights to stockings.

“We just thought it would be nice for your first Christmas back to feel as close to home as possible.”

She just barely stops herself from crying, but it’s a close thing. And now, with the ornaments, it’s not just Emma’s first Christmas, but both of theirs.

That night, Emma watches the lights stretch and twinkle as her eyes grow heavy. She and Killian are wrapped around each other, the blankets tightly tucked around them to keep out the December chill. She stares at everything they kept lit, watching some strands cycle through their programmed flashing and dancing.

Knowing that Killian is likely to ask her a very important question soon, Emma lets herself daydream about what a future with him will look like beyond the new year, or even the next one to come. If she squints just the right way, the loft transforms into somewhere bigger, and _theirs_. With rooms to fill with decorations and no landlords. She sees little shoes lined up by the ones they would keep at the door, and a little girl balanced on Killian’s feet as they dance together in the living room.

The image is so startlingly clear that Emma almost declares that they start trying right now, but she settles for slowly coaxing Killian back to full wakefulness, initiating lovemaking so sweet that her heart almost bursts with happiness somewhere in the middle, let alone the end that leaves her sweaty and panting and satisfied but craving, as always. He gives her everything she asks for and more, only letting himself chase release when he feels she’s been thoroughly pleased, and he kisses her tenderly after they’ve both cleaned up and crawled back into bed, whispering his love and merry wishes as they both drift off together.

A few days after the most perfect Christmas Emma could’ve ever imagined, she gets roped into making breakfast with Snow while David and Killian go out in search of more hot chocolate packets. When they come back, it might be her imagination but David’s eyes look a little misty. If Snow notices at all, she doesn’t say anything, and David must not share with her over the next couple months, because her sister-in-law is notoriously terrible at keeping secrets.

In the end, Killian hands her a ring of a different kind first, to a grand Victorian that she used to admire every time she drove by it, close to the water and large enough for her own practice space and a workshop for Killian. The other ring comes later, when they’re lying in bed together a year to the date after their first performance. Their future unfolds in the facets and sparkle, in the way Emma says yes after she slides to kneel on the floor in front of him.

Their first dance as husband and wife is definitely not a Mambo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words cannot express my gratitude that you've gotten this far. That you've read this whole thing. That you've (maybe or maybe not) given this kudos or left me a comment or even just finished it with a smile on your face. That's all that matters to me. And so, with that, I hope you enjoyed this small monster of a fic and I hope you'll enjoy whatever it is I come up with next!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this introductory chapter. I am hoping to keep up a weekly posting schedule, so keep your eyes open for this time next week! Thanks for reading and I hope you stick around for the next chapter. The whole thing is written, just needs some final edits in the later chapters.


End file.
